Whether you are teaching mainstream, advanced, or intervention language arts classes, you will find something helpful in a thorough writing packet. It includes prompts, rubrics, responses, helpful hints, graphic organizers, and many...

Encourage young writers to edit text based on conventions. After reviewing the conventions, fourth graders watch a teacher demonstrate how to revise a paragraph for correct spelling, capitalization, punctuation, or dialogue. Then, pairs...

Improve your fifth graders' persuasive writing skills in four weeks. Working independently, in peer editing groups, and with instruction, writers work over the 17 sessions to craft an argumentative essay. They craft a...

It's no secret that children can be very opinionated, but rather than fight against this natural tendency, embrace it with this primary grade writing project. After a shared reading of a children's book about...

A thorough unit on literary analysis and character development culminates in a final writing assessment. Prompted to compare the parent-child relationships in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club and H.G. Bissinger's Friday Night Lights, high...

Having prepared for an analysis essay about one of the characters from The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, tenth graders demonstrate their understanding in a mid-unit assessment. They focus on either Jing-Mei or Waverly in an informative...

As part of a study of the American Presidency, groups investigate five topics: Campaigns and Elections, Role and Responsibilities, Life in the White House, Assassination and Mourning, and Communicating the Presidency.

Whether the planks hide the beating of a hideous heart or they break away to the madness beneath, their presence makes itself known in the final instructional activity of a literary analysis unit. Having gathered textual evidence from...

Successful poetry writing requires three P's: planning, preparation, and practice. Pupils read a model two-voice poem and discuss how the author uses evidence to develop the theme. With a partner, scholars use a rubric to analyze the...

Readers examine the book Wonder by R.J. Palacio to determine how characters respond differently to situations and events. Readers annotate and analyze the text and carry out group discussion using accountable talk. They work in small...

Was that supposed to be funny? Scholars analyze The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County to determine if Mark Twain's story is indeed based on humor. Learners work through short response questions, vocabulary, and active reading to make a...

A speaker, a message, an audience. After analyzing these elements in Queen Elizabeth's speech to the troops at Tilbury, groups analyze how other speakers use an awareness of events, and their audience to craft their arguments....

It is difficult to articulate how growing up feels as accurately and beautifully as Sandra Cisneros does in her short story "Eleven." After seventh graders read the story and note the author's use of figurative language, they respond to...

Kurt Vonnegut's short story "Harrison Bergeron" engages adolescents with its theme about the dangers of complete societal equality. Learners complete a graphic organizer to track literary elements in the story, as well as an inference...

Primary sources are valuable for understanding the context of historical events, but the diction and dialect in these documents can be difficult to understand. Middle and high schoolers participation in a transcription process in which...

An effective lesson plan truly can make all the difference. Seventh graders read, analyze, and annotate Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" before writing an essay about what they believe to be the theme of the iconic poem.