State University of New York
Going Back in Time Using “George Washington’s Socks”
After reading Elvira Woodruff's George Washington's Socks, young readers and writers embark upon writing their own historically based story, with a focus on developing ideas and details throughout the piece. In small groups, class...
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...
University of North Carolina
Abstracts
Some of the best information to include when writing a research paper doesn't come from books, magazine articles, or informational websites—it comes from dissertations. However, reading an entire dissertation is often a daunting task....
Curated OER
Describing Characters with Rich Language
Second graders describe characters. In this describing characters lesson, 2nd graders dissect the text of a sample story and identify more descriptive words than those generally used. Students select their own character to describe from...
Project Noah
Writing Goes Wild
Young scientists develop their observation and writing skills as they craft and then post a detailed description of a plant or animal they have spotted and photographed.
Curated OER
"I" Witness to History
Young journalists write diary entries from the point of view of a person involved in a historical event. They focus on including facts, clear narration, and accurate description of the individual's feelings.
Curated OER
Story Telling through Photography
Use this writing and photography lesson plan in your descriptive writing unit. Elementary and middle schoolers write and create a story line incorporating photos from Inspiration or their own personal photos. They experiment with...
Curated OER
Dear Diary
Work on narrative writing with this lesson, in which middle schoolers analyze the characters from a selected piece of literature and write narrative diary pieces as the character. They work to understand the point of view of the...
Scholastic
Reading Characters
Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass provides the text for a study of how writers bring characters to life. Using the provided character mapping worksheets, readers respond to questions and then write a short character sketch.
Digital Public Library of America
Teaching Guide: Exploring Little Women
Louisa May Alcott's Little Women is a literary masterpiece as well as a timestamp of the formative mid-nineteenth century in America. Using a primary source set of photographs, letters, and portraits, readers discuss the ways...
Roald Dahl
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
The Charlie and the Chocolate Factory unit is a golden ticket for teachers looking for nicely written plans. Elementary and middle schoolers draw their impressions of characters, design and market their own candy creations, and use...
Curated OER
ESL: Practice Using Present Progressive Tense
Small, cartoonish pictures of people expressing emotions and actions (blowing his nose, holding her head and frowning, dancing, smiling) provide the basis for writers to describe the feelings and experiences taking place. Help your ESL...
Curated OER
Writing: Narrative, Expository, Persuasive, and Descriptive
If you are interested in having a basic framework for teaching expository, narrative, persuasive, and descriptive writing, this resource may help; however, you will have to find information on the different forms of writing to share with...
Curated OER
Writing Descriptive Paragraphs
Show a Powerpoint presentation about descriptive writing. Fourth graders brainstorm a list of writing topics and place them in graphic organizers. Then they write their own paragraphs describing topics of their choice and create...
Curated OER
Descriptive Writing-The Hobbit
Young readers write a descriptive paper on the fantasy characters in The Hobbit. They take notes as they read the novel in order to provide descriptions of the character traits of hobbits, dwarfs, trolls, wizards, and goblins. They...
Curated OER
Word Choice: Descriptive Verbs
In this word choice learning exercise, students will read a 5 paragraph essay about an igloo hotel. Then kids will replace 10 verbs with more descriptive verbs. Next, students will use strong verbs from a word bank to complete 14...
Curated OER
Idioms in Everyday Language
Learners create an iPhoto book exhibiting a variety of idioms that describe feelings. They take photos using a digital camera that show students exhibiting the feelings explained by the idioms.
Curated OER
Slang and Language Change
Slang, as an example of language change in action, is the focus of a short lesson that asks learners to contribute examples to a class list of terms that they use to separate themselves from other groups or adults. Consider expanding the...
Curated OER
Using Pre-reading Strategies: Infer
Use this resource to support your class practicing inference with poetry and visual art. The plan calls for an examination of "The Scream" by Edvard Munch and the "Mona Lisa" to promote speculation about artist's intent. From there, it...
Southern Nevada Regional Professional Development Program
Using Maps to Inspire Personal Narratives
A solid description of one way to teach narrative writing, this resource outlines the writing process from concept to completion. Class members create concept maps of moments in their lives and follow the writing process to publish their...
Curated OER
New York State Testing Program English Language Arts Test Book 2-Grade 8 (2010)
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...
Curated OER
Teaching Grammar in Context: Using Sentence Combining to Teach Subordination
Reinforce sentence styles with this lesson, which prompts young grammarians to build complex and compound-complex sentence structures. They respond to non-print text and identify subordinators as parts of speech procedure. They spell...
Curated OER
An Imaginary Creature And Then Using Describing And Action Words for a Creative Writing Exercise
You have to collect lots of materials (boxes, bags, toilet paper rolls, etc.) for this lesson to work successfully. After modeling how to create an imaginary creature out of the collection of recycled materials, let your class search...
Curated OER
Strong Verb Image Makers
Learners use description language to clarify ideas and create vivid images in an essay focusing of strong verbs. They discuss weak verbs and explore that the better image the words create, the better the reader understands the text.