When your class members have completed the novel Esperanza Rising, they will be ready to write an expository essay on how Esperanza responds to events and what this says about her character. Set your pupils up for success by...

Informative writing is emphasized in the standards. Help your learners reach that goal with the plan for paragraph writing outlined here. After reviewing the work from the day before and adding to their vocabulary notebooks, class...

Lesson ten in this unit for the book Bullfrogs at Magnolia Circle, prepares third graders to begin writing an informational paragraph about the adaptations of bullfrogs. First, young writers work either independently or in pairs to...

Fourth graders view examples of help-wanted ads as they plan and create their own writing in the fourteenth instructional activity of this unit on colonial trade. The engagement of the class is captured when the teacher shares an actual...

Move beyond the five-paragraph essay with a lesson introducing young writers to various forms of expository writing. Class members examine description, cause and effect, problem solution, sequence, and comparison forms. They create an...

Provide extra support with a unit that follows a teach, blend, guided practice, and practice/apply routine to reinforce reading, grammar, vocabulary, and writing skills. Reading and writing lessons include supporting details,...

Lesson 7 focuses on building academic vocabulary and writing an explanatory letter with supported textual evidence. For the first five minutes of the lesson, the educator reminds the class of how to read and refer to the accordion...

What happened to a murder case when the police eat the murder weapon? After reading Roald Dahl's dark and ironic short story "Lamb to the Slaughter," students write a persuasive essay to convince a jury that the wife who killed her...

Challenge writers to compose an essay detailing their stance on, and the history of, voting. Three assignments, each broken down into three parts, requires fifth graders to take notes, read and complete charts, write paragraphs, compare...

"What happens next?" Using real-life scenarios, movies, images, and other prompts, pupils practice making predictions based on inferences from clues. A SMART board activity takes them from making predictions to writing a prediction...

Use the constructive ideas in this resource to assist in developing your own career writing project for your junior high or young high school scholars. The resource provides step-by-step plans for the educator and learners, as well...

Class members examine examples that model how to develop and maintain a formal style and an objective tone in informative/explanatory writing. They also engage in a peer review activity and revise their work based on the feedback.

Scholars read excerpts from the story, Heidi, in a three-part assessment that focuses on comparing and contrasting characters. Each part contains three tasks that challenge learners to discuss, answer comprehension...

The American Revolution is the theme of a five-week unit that focuses on reading, grammar, morphology, and writing. Scholars read and respond to texts, practice spelling and word work, and write paragraphs. Assessments gauge comprehension.

The beauty of the way this expository writing resource is structured is that the units can be presented as a complete writing workshop or sequenced throughout a course of study

The engagement is in the details. Young scholars learn the benefit of weaving descriptive and sensory details into the fabric of their writing through the activities in this instructional activity. As their hands explore items concealed...

The Renaissance is the theme of a five-week unit designed to boost reading comprehension, spelling, vocabulary, and expository writing skills. Scholars listen to and discuss daily readings and engage in skills practice activities...

After researching an issue introduced in Tyson Miller's Dream of a Nation: Inspiring Ideas for a Better America, writers develop an original thesis statement and craft an analytic essay using evidence collected in their research.

Can you please clarify? Scholars continue to work on their argumentative essays about selling human tissue by clarifying and adding cohesion. Writers begin by looking at model paragraphs and then begin improving their writing. They...

Here is lesson 5 from a 7 lesson unit on using blogging to create a community of writers. The aim of this lesson is to get students writing about what Archaeologists do and how they use material data to study the past. They compose a...

There's a fine line between madness and genius. Using the resource, scholars complete a mid-unit assessment based on their study of Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own. They write a multi-paragraph response, analyzing how two central...

It's time to proof read! Pupils read and analyze proof paragraphs from a model essay. They then practice writing their own proof paragraphs to express an opinion about offshore oil drilling. 

Refuse to alienate your scientific-minded young scholars during your creative writing unit. Learners explore how literary writing can reflect observable fact, and be based in actual science. The links include examples of fiction and...

This writing pre-assessment has minimal instruction but maximum support and encouragement. It begins with a review of the book, Rain School, through a think-pair-share and small group discussion. The discussion...