Growing writers explore what it takes to develop and support a thesis statement with pre-fabricated ideas provided by the Virginia Department of Education. Learners take notes on what makes a thesis statement and a topic sentence, and...

Middle schoolers analyze how to use writing for generating and organizing their thoughts before communicating them. They use the questions on the first handout to organize a three-minute introduction of themselves to their small group....

Is a college education necessary for success in today's world? The class investigates the question, along with others at the end of the sixth workshop in a 15-part series. The lesson has four parts with multiple activities and...

Students read Macbeth and work in groups to organize and create an outline for a persuasive essay. For this persuasive essay lesson, students work in tiered learning groups to organize their thoughts for a persuasive thesis about the...

Students write a short essay.  In this essay writing instructional activity, students select from a tiered assignment a topic  in which to compose an expository essay.  

Although the ideas on how to implement the skill RI.9-10.2 are lacking, the assessment would work well for challenging learners to summarize, and identify the main ideas of presidential speeches that are of similar topics. One could use...

Complete personal pronoun practice activities. Pupils use correct personal pronoun form in sentences the teacher writes on the board. They review the function of a pronoun and the various cases and practice placing personal pronouns by...

Learners write a literary response essay to Maya Angelou's novel, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. For this literary response lesson, students complete pre-writing activities, discuss the rubric for the essay, and visit the given...

Students practice descriptive writing in a thank-you note format. In this descriptive writing lesson, students read the example letter and analyze the corrections in the letter. Students read the example thank you notes and focus on the...

Learners explore the characteristics of a persuasive letter. They label each characteristic and they create a persuasive letter using the correct business letter format. Students recommend a school rule or change of a rule and justify...