Young scholars engage in a lesson that is about the meaning of a verb or adverb. They perform sketches with the subject matter of the words. The goal is for the actors to show the meaning of the verb or adverb with an action.

Spice up your writing! Your amateur writers will benefit from concentrating on understanding and improving verb use in writing. An introductory activity addresses weak verbs. A second exercise helps them see the importance of strong...

Eighth graders explore how to incorporate vivid verbs in their writing. They review action verbs in sentences and view a Power Point presentation discussing possible verbs and their meanings. They view a website and retell a Greek myth...

Students remove to beverbs from their writing. In this verb usage instructional activity, students write strategies from eliminating to be verbs, then locate the verbs in their writing and eliminate as many as possible.

Review the narrative writing process with your emerging story writers. They read a sample narrative and identify five vague verbs that could be replaced with a more exact, exciting verb. Then they write a personal narrative making sure...

Students practice in constructing simple past tense forms and checking for subject verb agreement.

Third graders listen to directions as they perform a theatrical role.  In this vocabulary lesson, 3rd graders listen to and observe the adjectives given to them during a practice of their performance by the director.  Students...

Reinforce sentence styles with this lesson, which prompts young grammarians to build complex and compound-complex sentence structures. They respond to non-print text and identify subordinators as parts of speech procedure. They spell...

Students read and spell common contractions formed from a verb paired with the word not. They read and spell common contractions formed from a pronoun paired with a verb.

Eighth graders are introduced to the techniques to write properly. As a class, they practice writing complete sentences and discover how to avoid run-on sentences. In groups, they review action and state of being verbs and practice...

Students research the motives, actions, and results of U.S. intervention in foreign affairs between the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Dive into journalism with your high schoolers! The resources provided here will help your learners write unbiased, clear, and succinct newspaper articles. First they spend time sifting through stacks of articles, filling out a graphic...

Help readers learn to create their own open-ended questions for any text you are working with. Using Bloom's Taxonomy, learners begin on the lower levels and work their way up to form questions that focus on synthesis instead of simple...

Students write a fictional story into a comic book format. In this creative writing lesson, students analyze example comics and discuss the format. Students create a comic book using imaginary characters that find a solution to a problem.

Young scholars use descriptive strategies such as physical descriptions, background, and comparison of characters when writing narratives. They develop the topic with supporting details and precise diction to paint a visual image in the...

Students conduct field research of a historical site in order to discover a more complete understanding of a time period. They choose one particular historical figure and write a short poem about the site from the historical person's...

Drama is ever-present in our daily lives and eloquently depicted on stage. Middle schoolers practice writing scenes based on different prompts and frameworks, and then perform those creative scenes for their classmates. The...

A great resource for your unit on Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. Small groups conduct research about related topics (list included), write papers, present PowerPoint slide shows, and take a student-created test. Fill in a few...

Third graders practice following and writing directions through the use of simple recipes. First they write directions for creating an ice cream sundae. Then they make the sundaes using the recipe written by their classmates.

Pupils complete acting exercises as a part of a precise language activity to help them build vocabulary and improve their descriptive writing skills. In this theatre and writing lesson, students create and act out a sentence with two new...

Students consider the influence of bullies and map the social ecosystem of their schools. They create lifelines that compare baboon and human development and write an essay that considers the relationship between psychosocial development...

Students brainstorm ideas for legislation and present their ideas to the class. They draft a bill and take it through the normal procedures of the Canadian Parliament.

Students use a popular American song to learn the past and present continuous tenses. They complete a web quest about the song "This Land is Your Land" and discuss it.

Students practice conflict resolution by considering alternatives before reacting to a conflict.