After listening to the story, The Best Part of Me, learners will identify a positive physical feature of themselves, and create a descriptive poem about their favorite feature. Photographs are taken, and a nice final draft of the poem is...

After reading and analyzing two narrative memoirs, middle schoolers engage in a variety of activities, including writing an essay, developing a story map, and creating character charts. They then compare and contrast story maps, and...

Writing a persuasive argument starts with a clear thesis. Using this resource, your class will write a persuasive paper on a conservation issue. They will then transform their argument into a 30-second public service announcement. If...

Conduct a close reading of George G. Toudouze's well-known horror story "Three Skeleton Key." This plan breaks up the reading into several steps and provides text-dependent questions to ask along the way. Learners will have the chance to...

What happened to a murder case when the police eat the murder weapon? After reading Roald Dahl's dark and ironic short story "Lamb to the Slaughter," young scholars write a persuasive essay to convince a jury that the wife who killed her...

What was life like for civilians who were home during WWII? The lesson uses a PowerPoint presentation with photos to explain life on the home front was like during World War II, including shortages of food, collecting scrap metal, and...

The similarities and differences between academic and everyday summaries/abstracts are explored in this PowerPoint. After reading "Historiographic Reflection on Israel’s Origins: The Rise and Fall of the Patriarchal Age,” and abstracts...

Eighth graders are introduced to authors in the conservation community. As a class, they describe a personal experience they have had with nature. They identify examples of an author's descriptive writing techniques and answer questions...

Hobbits, dwarfs, wizards, trolls, and goblins. Readers track these fantastic creatures through J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit noting passages of character description and habitats. Using specific passages from the novel, class...

 Young scholars describe the sensory experience of a character's journey in an essay.  In this precise details writing lesson, students explain the effects on the senses of weather, time of day, landscape, and other...

Pupils practice experiencing writing with appropriate language and incorporating the eight parts of speech. They assess that many words have multiple functions when used in different contexts. Each student free writes in response to a...

A great student reference tool and graphic organizer in one worksheet! Young writers can read a detailed description of each section of a standard five-paragraph essay before completing a graphic organized with their own writing. The...

Students review previously written essays, draw pictures of shapes, and write descriptive essays.

Get your writers started on their personal essay with a worksheet that gently guides them into formulating some ideas they might use. Strengths, weaknesses, major experiences, influential individuals, all offer something that can be a...

Music is a universal pleasure, but writing about it can be a little trickier. An informative handout discusses common types of music writing assignments that one might encounter in a college-level course. Individuals read about musical...

What evidence supports the big bang theory? Individuals analyze scholarly resources about the the theory and develop arguments backed by evidence. They brainstorm, share ideas, watch a video, and read articles to complete a graphic...

What does is take to be a role model? Through grand conversation, and the use of books and a graphic organizer, scholars find out and apply the requirements to identify a role model within their family. They then journey through the...

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...

Twelve categories of verbs exist in the future tense, ranging from simple present to future perfect progressive, but only three have a place in academic writing. Those three tenses make up the content of an informational handout that...

How can an unfamiliar place help you learn something about yourself? Use a narrative writing prompt as you culminate your unit on Jane Yolen's The Devil's Arithmetic. Kids consider the ways that, like the main character from the...

Students effectively revise character descriptions.  In this revising character descriptions lesson, students work with a partner to give and receive constructive criticism to improve their character descriptions. 

Fifth graders analyze well written and poorly written essays and define the four steps in the writing process. In this writing lesson plan, 5th graders edit poorly written essays.

Second graders write as essay describing the cooperative group drawing they made or describing the process to draw a group picture.

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 has students use each boxcar of the train as a template for a paragraph.