Student Achievement Partners
"The Glorious Whitewasher" from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain with Mini-Assessment
It's the classic scene: Tom Sawyer is whitewashing a fence. Expose your learners to Mark Twain's humor while reinforcing reading comprehension. Eighth graders are encouraged to read and reread, achieving as much exposure to the text as...
Curated OER
Back to School: Style Analysis
Jump back into expository writing and analysis at the start of a new school year! Start with a review of an authors' stylistic choices in diction, syntax, treatment of subject matter, and figurative language. Writers choose a text to...
San José State University
Parallelism
What is parallelism? Novice writers learn about parallelism and practice balancing 10 sentences for better syntax and parallel structure. A clear, straightforward worksheet with answers included.
Curated OER
Using Transitions
Transitions, words that reveal the relationship between two ideas, are the subject of a presentation that provides color-coded illustrations to show viewers how this part of speech functions in sentences. The PowerPoint concludes with an...
Curated OER
Sentence Combining
Learners practice sentence combining at increasingly difficult levels throughout a week. They begin with nouns and verbs and build to contrasts, parallels, etc.Â
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Active and Passive Voice
Six quick slides show the difference between the active and passive voice and how to eliminate the passive voice in one's writing. Identify the subject and verb of the sentences shown, and rearrange them to change the voice. Encourage...
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Collective Nouns Sentence Maze
Amaze your class with this worksheet! A maze is made up of lines as well as words. Class members connect the words in each sentence to find their way through the maze. Learners must employ correct usage of collective nouns and have...
Curated OER
Review of Compound and Complex Sentences
An excellent language arts learning exercise. Learners read seven sentences and determine if each is simple, compound, or complex. In order to practice sentence combining, young writers join 10 sets of sentences to form compound...
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Georgia CRCT - 7th Grade Language Arts Quiz
Writing conventions are the focus of this standardized practice test. Designed for the Georgia Criterion-Referenced Competency Test (CRCT), these fifteen questions address grammar (capitalization, parts of speech, homonyms) and writing...
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Two Sides, Same Coin: How Political Beliefs Influence Language Use
Learners read several magazine articles on the same topic written from different political perspectives, paying particular attention to the diction, syntax, and arguments presented in support the point of view expressed. They then select...
San José State University
Sentence Fragments
Work on sentence fragments with your class using this handout and brief exercise. This resource, which could be used as a reference sheet for learners, goes into detail about complete sentences and the different errors that cause...
Curated OER
Eliminating Wordiness
Teach your class how to write concisely and edit writing. The slide show covers be verbs, active voice, passive voice, repetitive wording, and more. Complete with numerous examples and images, it is a comprehensive resource that could be...
Curated OER
Intermediate Paragraph Correction #8
If you are looking for a worksheet to challenge intermediate English learners on verb tense, syntax, and punctuation, you might want to check out this worksheet. Readers select the correct revisions to a passage in eight multiple choice...
San José State University
Writing Concisely: Deleting or Replacing Unnecessary Information
Are you actually feeling really tired of reading wordy, redundant, long, lengthy sentences practically all the time over and over again? Introduce writers to this handout and exercise to teach to tighten up their prose! Provides two ways...
San José State University
Avoiding Nominalization
Improve syntax with this explanatory handout. It clarifies one way to make writing more precise: avoiding nominalization. This resource provides four ways to find and change nominalization problems and 10 sentences to correct. There are...
Curated OER
Run-On Sentences
Have you seen run-on sentences in your learners' writing lately? If you're looking to address this issue, you might use this run-on sentence handout as a reference sheet. This handout lists examples of run-on sentences as well as...
Curated OER
Voice Lessons
Students visualize examples of sentence structure by creating patterns with Lego blocks. They apply terms of voice and syntax by critiquing others' writings as well as revising their own writing pieces. Revision is the key within this...
Curated OER
International Dance Day: Reading and Activities for ELD
A brief passage about International Dance Day, April 29, is accompanied by an array of language activities based in sound ELD practice: cloze exercise, phrase matching, word jumble, multiple choice, sequencing, interview, group...
Curated OER
Semantic Gaps and Sources of New Words
The 44 slides in this power point presentation make visual the salient points in a college lecture to develop language and semantic awareness.
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Beginning Paragraph Correction #8
Readers answer 8 multiple choice questions by selecting the correct revisions to the paragraph provided. The focus is on prepositions, syntax, and parts of speech. A good, quick exercise for ELL classes or review for middle schoolers.
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BBC Learning English, Dialogue
In this dialogue worksheet, students re-order a conversation between two people so that it makes sense. This exercise requires strong English language comprehension skills.
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Faulty Parallelism
Practice using parallel structure. Learners correct faulty parallelism in an extensive list of sentences. The faults in each sentence are sometimes subtle, so scholars will need solid background knowledge on parallel structure to catch...
Curated OER
Sentence Fragments
Complement your lesson on sentence structure with a sentence fragment handout. While it is not interactive, learners could use it as a reference to help identify sentence fragments as they edit their own work.
Curated OER
Beginning Sentence Correction 4
In this worksheet, students correct the errors in verb tense and syntax in each simple sentence. This worksheet could be used as a warm-up activity with ESL learners.