Explore informative and explanatory writing with this lesson plan. Using a cube labeled with directives to describe, analyze, compare, associate, apply, and argue the topic, middle schoolers work individually or in groups to answer...

Fifth graders review their writing for repetition of words at the beginning of the sentence.  In this informal writing lesson, 5th graders share examples of sentence beginnings.  Students use a thesaurus to find antonyms and...

What a great instructional activity, upper graders are sure to love. They explore costume design and the relationships between theatre, culture, and history. They research three time periods, write a response about two of them, then...

Design an informational brochure to urge people to move to a specific community. The purpose of this activity is to expose pupils to expository writing. After creating the brochure, they write a three-paragraph persuasive or...

Writing a paragraph from details found directly in a text is the central focus of this thorough and explicit lesson plan. Using the stories Nasreen's Secret School and Rain School, third graders are lead step-by-step...

Use an article about an Orca killing a trainer to help writers complete a persuasive essay. The article, other templates, and models are attached. Scholars divide up into groups of three where each person takes a different role,...

Your special education students can memorize their personal information. In order to master their personal information, they create a photo book to help them remember names, birthdays, addresses, phone numbers, then take pictures to...

Whether you are teaching a newspaper unit in language arts, covering the First Amendment and censorship in social studies, or focusing on writing ethics in journalism, a unit based on the foundations of journalism would be an excellent...

Middle schoolers aren't too young to feel strongly about politics, social issues, consumer rights, or environmental problems. Demonstrate the first steps toward social change with a project about action-oriented writing. Eighth...

Explain a natural phenomenon in an original myth. After researching the phenomenon they have chosen, young readers use factual information to include in their myth.  They find synonyms and new phrases to create vivid images as they...

Happy birthday! Celebrate everyone's birthday with this writing activity, which prompts seventh graders to research historical events in a country at the time of their birth to create an essay. Working in pairs, they proofread each...

Help your young writers recognize the importance of composing formal letters. Middle schoolers read letters written by Thomas Jefferson and analyze the components that make it a formal letter.  They will then compose their own...

Analyze magazines as a class, looking carefully for the target audience, advertisements, and topics presented. Small groups then work as a publication team and receive a magazine that they have to "sell." Each individual has a different...

HIgh schoolers respond to a persuasive article on using animal research. In this english lesson, writers listen to a conversation, and discuss the point of arguments. They write a critique on a certain film and share it with their...

Show a Powerpoint presentation about descriptive writing. Fourth graders brainstorm a list of writing topics and place them in graphic organizers. Then they write their own paragraphs describing topics of their choice and create...

One photograph can represent so much more than the images on the film. Eighth graders select a photograph from the Civil War era and conduct additional research based on the subject matter from the picture. Once they complete the...

Get the scoop with a fun, engaging newspaper project. After analyzing the parts of a newspaper, including the headline, subtitles, and pictures or images, young journalists get to work by writing their own stories in a newspaper article...

Give your junior high researchers a clear concept of how to go about starting their research paper with the resources available in this exercise. Students develop an idea to research, and spend time in the library or computer lab...

Use your class's knowledge of pollution and water treatment to write an editorial to town citizens. They apply prior knowledge in order to compose a letter intended for newspaper publication, focusing on writing to an appropriate audience.

  Did you know that 50% of all Americans can trace a relative who traveled through Ellis Island? Relive these journeys with your class and then provide sentence strategy templates for them to use to compose their own informative...

Have your class conduct research to learn all they can about simple machines. They use the web, take notes from a video, write a script, then make a film describing various simple machines found in real life. These videos are then...

Explore how illustrations add to a story. Young learners will look at picture books to see how the pictures tell the story. They create illustrations to go with a chosen story, and then flip the activity so they have to write a story to...

Even an outline can give you enough information to execute an awsome project. The tasks for each of the seven weeks of this project are defined, as well as the objective and specific content facilitated through the project. Learners will...

Pages and pages of engaging activities, worksheets, and writing projects on teaching folktales and fables await you! You don't want to miss this incredible resource that not only includes a wide range of topics and graphic...