As teachers, it is our job to encourage learners to stand up for what they believe in and help them learn lessons from life's events. A set of practice questions designed for the ELA MCAS assessment features passages that teach positive...

When it comes to teaching writing, it helps to start small. A supplementary guide to A Writer's Guide to Powerful Paragraphs provides suggested activities to help writers craft a variety of paragraphs. Each assignment covers a...

Through grand conversation, help scholars identify issues that harm the Earth and find solutions on how to solve them. After voting—on what your class deems the most important problem—stretch writing muscles with a problem-solution...

What a fantastic resource to guide youngsters in persuasive letter writing. They read a brief letter to the editor and answer question about the author's purpose, word choice, and structure. Next, scholars draft their own letter by...

Two narrative excerpts tell the same story from different points of view. In the first excerpt (first person), sequencing words and phrases are bolded and learners write down what the bold type does. The second excerpt is in third...

An exceptionally creative approach is taken to assessing your biologists' grasp of natural selection concepts. They are to imagine hosting Charles Darwin for dinner and having, to their surpise, a few other noted scientists crash the...

Looking to improve your classes literacy program? Then look no further. This comprehensive collection of resources includes worksheets and activities covering everything from r-controlled vowels and consonant digraphs, to the...

Young poets use word cards to prompt a metaphor poem comparing to very dissimilar items.

Here are three well-thought-out tasks intended to build good note taking and letter writing skills. The class reads three short letters, determines who wrote them (based on context) and takes notes as a pre-writing activity. They...

Sentence combining meets multiple objectives for writers, and they are all available in this informational text exercise. Learners read a mixed-up excerpt about the history of chess, putting 15 sentences into logical order. Have a...

What type of writing is this? Learners read a brief introduction to various types of text: instructions, explanations, poems, folk tales, novels, informative, and arguments. The introduction doesn't explain these, so...

Budding journalists examine and evaluate an informative poster advertising a public meeting to discuss city park issues. They write a paragraph explaining what they found to be effective and ineffective about the poster, then imagine...

Prepositions are an important part of descriptive writing. Fourth graders fill in the blanks with prepositions from a word bank, then write ten sentences with the remaining words. 

Begin your persuasive writing with a helpful exercise on making points. With a list of ten points on transportation in a city, third graders map a logical order to their argument. They then write one or two paragraphs about the points...

Middle schoolers are likely very familiar with the concept of bullying and cliques. Discuss their experiences and brainstorm ways to handle peer conflict and feelings of exclusion with a poem that focuses on bullying, and a second lesson...

Why don't dinosaurs wander the earth any longer? Answer this fascinating question with young readers as they examine a brief informational text. There are bolded words to separate text sections which are an excellent example of...

Are you working on a letter writing unit? Use this worksheet on addressing letters to help your second graders' letters get to the right place! Each section helps students write out the address, return address, and message of a postcard....

Need some punctuation practice? Challenge your third or fourth graders' editing skills with a helpful instructional activity on punctuation. After naming different types of punctuation marks, they rewrite a paragraph that has multiple...

Do your fourth graders need a little help with punctuation? Use this run-on paragraph to demonstrate proofreading for capitalization, punctuation, and separating ideas into separate paragraphs. At the end of the activity, learners...

Bananas are an important part of a healthy diet - but where do they come from? Third graders write an explanatory text about the origins of bananas. The bottom part of the paper includes necessary information about bananas, as well as a...

Have a go at this exercise in thinking by asking thinkers to think about thinking, of what they think of, and what they think about. The worksheets in the packet provide much food for thought.

A current and engaging informational text with some superb scaffolding activities, this six paragraph article discusses the release of the iPad from Apple, eBooks, and the history of reading and writing materials. After reading the...

Kids age 13 and older are asked to read the provided Times article and background information in order to construct a thoughtful blog response to Obama's first Oval Office speech. They work to address each of the related critical...

Get scholars thinking about the scientific process with this fun experiment they can do at home. Learners practice reading directions as they underline each instruction in a procedural paragraph. They create a flow chart and record...