Class members take a break from discussing The Autobiography of Malcolm X to focus on their personal narrative essays. Before working on their drafts, they review what they have learned from their study of Haley's narrative about...

Binoculars are used as a metaphor for good descriptive writing. Class members first view a small picture and then an enlarged view of the same image in which the details come into focus. Next, learners examine a paragraph lacking sensory...

Entrance essays are the ultimate sales pitch! Show your seniors how to market themselves in the first of six college and career readiness lesson plans. Pupils discover the do's and don'ts of writing personal statements through research,...

Working in pairs, class members use the provided narrative writing rubric to assess the effectiveness of dialogue, pacing, and description in two model paragraphs with similar content. Writers then use the insights they have gained from...

Chapter 12 of The Autobiography of Malcolm X discusses Haley's narrative techniques, mainly how he uses point of view and foreshadowing to build interest and suspense. Class members read and annotate chapter 13 of the text as homework...

Reading a scientific article about cross-species synchronization may sound like a yawner. But "Monkey See, Monkey Do" is a fascinating tale that just happens to be about yawning, within and across species. After a close reading, class...

When it comes to love and midsummer nights, confessions are tricky. Learners place themselves in the shoes of a character from William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and explain how a character manipulated another character in...

Malcolm X's journey to Cairo, his Hajj, his Letter from Mecca detailing his insights into "true Islam," and his transition to Al-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz are the focus of the discussion of chapter 17 of The Autobiography of Malcolm X.

Equip your high school writers for the rigors of timed persuasive writing by employing the preparatory ideas available in this exercise. Learners use persuasive essays, provided by the educator, to acquire how to identify persuasive...

As part of their exploration of the American dream, class members examine primary source materials to compare immigrant experiences of those arriving early in our country's history to those arriving in the US after World War...

Should primary graders have their own computers? Should animals be kept in captivity? Young writers learn how to develop and support a claim in this short unit on persuasive writing.