Curated OER
Creatively Creating Expository Essays
Students, after reading Fahrenheit 451, brainstorm inventions that could have been in the novel. They present their invention to the class and writing an expository essay about their creation.
Virginia Department of Education
Developing an Essay: Word Choice
Grading essays after reading a novel written by a lyrical master (think Nabokov, Morrison, Chabon) is a deflating experience. Why can’t your student’s display the same skill in diction as your favorite writers? Because you did not use...
University of Delaware
Constructing Text-Based Arguments About Social Issues
Eighth graders take a stand on a variety of controversial topics with a lesson on argumentative writing. As they view an informative presentation and work with collaborative groups, they decide which side of each argument they want to...
Bright Hub Education
Find Future Employment Ideas by Writing a Career Essay
Use the constructive ideas in this resource to assist in developing your own career writing project for your junior high or young high school scholars. The resource provides step-by-step plans for the educator and learners, as well as...
New York State Education Department
Comprehensive English Examination: August 2014
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...
Main Memory Network
Longfellow's "The Village Blacksmith" and Whitman's "Song of Myself"
Although the work Americans do has changed over time, the plight of the American worker has largely remained the same. Facilitate a class discussion aboutAmerican workers using Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "The Village Blacksmith" and...
Curated OER
Planning Your Essay
Students discover how to organize essays effectively. In this writing lesson, students construct a spider map to develop their ideas for an essay.
Curated OER
All Aboard! All Aboard! The Essay Train
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 plan has students use each boxcar of the train as a template for a paragraph.
Curated OER
Four Year Plan Essay
Students complete a personal vision, a four year plan essay, meant to stimulate their thinking process. They set a foundation for what they hope to strive for in the next four years to come.
Curated OER
Writer's Toolbox
Present the class with a slide show that will give them a great head start in writing expository and narrative texts. The information is highlighted for easy note taking, well organized, and presented in a kid-friendly manner. It...
Curated OER
Performance-Based Assessment Practice Test (Grade 4 ELA/Literacy)
Track the progress of your fourth graders' reading and writing skills with this practice Common Core assessment. Based on a collection of six reading passages that include narrative stories, poetry, and a series of informational...
9/11 Memorial & Museum
The Destruction and Rebuilding of the World Trade Center
How did an investigation into the causes of the collapse of the Twin Towers, as a result of the 9/11 attacks, inform the construction of the new 1 World Trade Center? That is the central question of a resource that asks class members...
California Education Partners
Vincent Van Gogh
Living in someone's shadow would be difficult for anyone, including one of the most talented artists of the modern age. Middle schoolers read an excerpt from Vincent Van Gogh: Portrait of an Artist by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan...
University of North Carolina
Sentence Patterns
In an ideal world, sentences in a college-level essay should feature a variety of sentence types. In reality, most papers stick to simple and compound sentences, two of the types a handout on sentence patterns discusses. Part of a larger...
Teacher Created Resources
Problem and Solution: By Jove, I Think You've Got It
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 essay...
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Les Miserables Study Help Essay Questions
In this literature worksheet, students respond to 20 short answer and essay questions about Hugo's Les Miserables. Students may also link to an online interactive quiz on the selection at the bottom of the page.
Curated OER
Rule of 3 Web
Students create a web with the writing topic in the center of the web. They extend three branches from the center of the web, write the main ideas that support and develop the topic. They draw three branches that extend from each main...
New York State Education Department
Comprehensive English Examination: January 2014
What better way to prepare learners for academic success than to administer practice tests? With the Comprehensive Examination in English, scholars read informational and literary texts and answer listening and reading comprehension...
New York State Education Department
Comprehensive English Examination: August 2015
Looking at literature through a critical lens helps readers connect the text to the larger world. An essay examining the theme "There is no ill in the world without a remedy" forms the main part of a sample comprehensive English...
New York State Education Department
Comprehensive English Examination: June 2016
Those in positions of authority don't always have the best interest of their people in mind. As part of a sample assessment question, readers must consider how works of literature they read apply to a quote from Edmund Burke—"The greater...
New York State Education Department
Comprehensive English Examination: June 2013
Tired of having to create your own formative assessments? Use a ready-made resource to assess listening and reading comprehension, essay writing, and literary skills. Scholars work through 28 questions in response to five different texts.
New York State Education Department
Comprehensive English Examination: August 2012
Looking for a resource to wrap up all English skills in one? Here's a comprehensive resource that includes listening and reading passages, responding to poems, writing an essay, and analyzing a quote. The packet includes passages and...
New York State Education Department
Comprehensive English Examination: January 2015
Looking for practice for state standardized testing? Scholars work through a variety of passages and multiple question types in this exam. Questions range from comprehension of auditory passages, reading passages, and poems, as well as...
New York State Education Department
Comprehensive English Examination: June 2014
Learners take their first step toward mastering test-taking by answering questions based on listening and reading comprehension. In addition to multiple choice questions, the examination includes two short-answer items and one essay.