Twenty-eight lessons make a unit that focuses on skills practice. Lessons explore r-controlled vowels, past tense verbs, nouns, adjectives, and two-syllable words. Pupils read a story, answer questions, and draft a descriptive essay...

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....

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...

A three-part assessment challenges scholars to write opinion essays covering the topic of the student council. After reading three passages, writers complete a chart, work with peers to complete a mini-research project, answer...

Your young writers will practice identifying the hook, position statement, and main points of two examples of persuasive writing.

An extensive collection of lessons and activities includes many writing, grammar, and proofreading exercises. With templates and worksheets that cover several steps in the writing process, from sentence to paragraph to essay, this...

Designed to help writers strengthen their elaboration, revision, and proofreading skills, this 48-page workbook is packed with information about and exercises in personal, narrative, persuasive, and report writing.

Just like with any skill, test-taking aptitude improves with practice. Learners complete the handout, answering reading comprehension questions and engaging in timed writing exercises. The test includes multiple-choice and constructed...

Using a set of primary source documents, such as descriptions of climate phenomena and images of weather events, pupils consider how climate shapes history. A second essay prompt and multiple-choice questions with documents engage...

Students review previously written essays, draw pictures of shapes, and write descriptive essays.

Explore identity and community through an expository essay based on The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. This two-week unit on writing an essay provides a brief description of each day and all of the worksheets and...

A great student reference tool and graphic organizer in one worksheet! Young writers can read a detailed description of each section of a standard five-paragraph essay before completing a graphic organized with their own writing. The...

Build the skills your budding authors need to develop to compose well-structured paragraphs. Give them the topic sheet (included here), and have them write a cohesive paragraph using the ideas listed. Consider having them include two...

Third graders enjoy a train ride with The Little Engine That Could and discover how to create a five-paragraph essay train. This clever lesson has students use each boxcar of the train as a template for a paragraph.

Wrap-up a unit on global climate change with a instructional activity that examines the causes and effects of climate change. Learners fill out a chart that represents what they think causes climate change—natural and human-based—and...

Class members will be as confident as prize-winning thoroughbreds after completing a worksheet on figurative language. Young writers jot down metaphors and similes for three categories: they way they look, they way...

John Muir may be a friend to the natural world, but as a short reading passage confirms, he is no friend to rattlesnakes. As young readers learn about Muir's encounters with the dangerous creatures, they answer four comprehension...

Third graders read excepts from the story, Thank You, Mr. Falker in order to gain practice in understanding an unfamiliar story by focusing on the details. They use a worksheet, embedded in the plan, which directs them to certain...

Science, engineering, and United States history? Pupils research collections of artifacts from the Smithsonian to learn about historical scientific innovations. At the end of the lesson, they write an essay to discuss technology's...

Get the facts about credit and take a close look at what factors into a consumer credit report with this fantastic lesson. Your pupils will read informational texts, read sample financial documents, and discuss the advantages...

Students examine and discuss most appropriate format for giving examples in the American discourse style.

Learners use their senses to help describe special place they have been. They write short sensory-image essay that incorporate all five of their senses, and identify sensory language while reading different pieces of literature.

As you explore an excerpt from Upton Sinclair's The Jungle with your class, discuss how his descriptions of the meat-packing industry caught the public's attention and helped to promote change in the Progressive Era.

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...