Young writers recount their visit to a restaurant, describing where they went, what they ate, and who was in the party.

Can you put that in writing? Scholars work with a partner to write a practice claim before writing their own claims. After writing their claims, learners share with class using a Concentric Circles activity.

Foster community in your classroom and encourage learners to get up and get to know each other. Individuals each receive the classmate inventory handout included and use it to fill in information about their fellow scholars. Once they...

Poetry or prose? That is the question facing middle schoolers as they begin a month-long poetry unit by examining the characteristics that differentiate poetry and prose writing. Pupils learn about poetic devices and different types of...

Reinforce main idea and supporting details with your seventh graders in this language arts lesson. Using a SMART board presentation and handouts (all attachments are provided), they review and practice finding main idea and details in...

Get ready for state testing with this resource, which focuses on listening and writing skills. While a complete description of the writing assignment is provided here, the listening portion is not included. You could use the graphic...

Young scholars examine how a scene in a movie or in literature is constructed. In this film and literature lesson students answer questions based on film clips then create storyboards depicting a scene from their life.

Students practice their creative writing skills and build cooperative learning skills. For this creative writing project, students review parts of a story. Students reinforce the concept of sequencing and develop stronger writing...

Grrrrr, gargoyles are on the loose! Young artists are familiarized with the history of gargoyles, examine pictures of them, and hear a story about them. Then, they draw a gargoyle and write down exactly how they did it (procedural...

Use the fairy tale Rumpelstiltskin to teach your third grade class about descriptive writing. Following a teacher read-aloud of the story, the class brainstorms a list of adjectives describing the main character. Learners use this list...

Sometimes a picture reflects a thousand descriptive words. To illustrate the importance of sensory words in descriptive writing, scholars listen to a song and craft a painting in response. After sharing their work with the class,...

Middle schoolers learn to show, not tell, in their narrative writing. A slide show takes them through the process of choosing strong, descriptive words, and then provides writing prompts for them to use as practice. The first two pages...

Introduce middle schoolers to playwriting and the elements of drama with a six-session storytelling unit that encourages kids to expand their acting and writing skills. The 12-page packet includes overviews of the lessons,...

After watching West of the West's documentary The Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island, class members imagine how Juana Maria/Karana may have felt about living alone on the island for 18 years and craft a blackout poem or a narrative in...

Hunkering down in the trenches of World War I, Leland Linman decided to write a journal about his experiences. By reading Linman's entries in the fourth installment of an eight-part lesson series, scholars get a firsthand look at life in...

The opportunities are endless with a worksheet containing 24 biographical narrative writing prompts. Although there are no directions or specifications for the writing process, the prompts promote the use of narrative writing...

World War I was the first major conflict on a global scale. Using primary documents, learners determine why the United States chose to enter World War I when it did. After analytical writing and group research, the causes of America's...

Using adjectives to create vivid descriptions is the focus of exercises in this resource. A cloze reading activity asks class members to add missing adjectives to passages from Mark Teague's The Lost and Found. They then read...

Although designed for the Canadian War Museum, the concept here is a solid one. Class members select an artifact from the First World War, examine it, research it, and craft an explanative label that they attach to their picture and post...

  Your archaeologists combine proportional reasoning with exponential functions in a real-life task centered on Carbon 14 dating.          

It's easy to criticize those in power until you're sitting at their desk, faced with the same decisions. A history activity prompts secondary learners to research the Roosevelt presidencies through the lens of leadership and...

Identify the unique personal attributes of your class members. Begin by viewing the Visual Thesaurus and discussing displayed attributes associated with famous American leaders. Using these identity maps as models, pupils generate nouns...

It is impossible to know whether one has reached a goal without first knowing the goal. Help your sixth graders reach all the Common Core writing standards by giving them a checklist written in language they will understand. As you teach...