The New York Times
Getting Personal: Writing College Essays for the Common Application
Develop an understanding of the open-ended questions that are a part of the college Common Application. Future college learners collaborate, discuss prompts acquired from the application, and philosophize on their plan of attack for the...
Infobased Learning
Bloom's Literature: How to Write about Nineteen Eighty Four
A good prompt is hard to find, especially ones that encourage application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation of a text. Help is here in the form of a prompt list for George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four that offers essay topics that...
Minnesota State University
Writing Sample Constructed-Response Assignment
Class members practice their writing skills by completing a prompt about maturity. They develop a constructed response about something they once thought was important, but may not be as important now.
Birmingham City Schools
Stick to the Point: Getting It Right with Constructed Responses
Practice writing constructed responses with a 26-slide presentation. Developed to guide scholars through the appropriate steps, the resource assists them in providing a well-considered answer.
California Education Partners
Quest for Tree Kangaroo
A three-day assessment challenges scholars to read a passage from an informational text then complete two activities that lead to a writing assignment. Day one and two begin as readers independently read a passage and tag the most...
Curated OER
Web It!
Looking for a way to bring prewriting into your informative writing unit? Use this lesson plan to reinforce writing skills in your eighth grade language arts class. Young writers use a web graphic organizer as a prewriting tool for...
Santa Ana Unified School District
Getting to the Core: Early American Poets
How do poets convey emotion and represent their views of life? Pupils learn more about Whitman and Dickinson through the unit and analyze their bold reinvention of craft and style for poets to come. Looking at classic pieces such as...
EngageNY
Grade 9 ELA Module 2, Unit 3, Lesson 6
As part of a mid-unit assessment, class members exchange their draft of a multi-paragraph essay with a classmate, review their partner's writing using the provided text analysis rubric, and evaluate the strength of evidence, the...
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Writing Workshop: Writing a Compare-Contrast Essay
Crafting a compare-contrast essay can prove to be a challenge even for experienced writers. Eradicate the mystery with a PowerPoint that details the rationale for and the structure of this form of expository writing. The 20-slide...
Curated OER
It’s Your Birthday! – Conventions: Revision and Proofreading
Happy birthday! Celebrate everyone's birthday with this writing activity, which prompts seventh graders to research historical events in a country at the time of their birth to create an essay. Working in pairs, they proofread each...
K12 Reader
An Interesting Animal
"Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!" Primary graders write about an animal that interests them, describing what it looks like, where it lives, and what it eats.
Fluence Learning
Writing About Literature: Exploring Themes About Conformity
Feeling the pressure to confirm is something any adolescent can relate to. Explore an essential theme with a response to literature assessment that prompts learners to identify main ideas with evidence and supporting details.
Curated OER
Home Smart Home
How smart is your home? Middle and high schoolers write a journal entry describing the types of technology found in their homes. After reading an article, they are introduced to "smart" home technology. In groups, they identify and...
Curated OER
Quick Writes
Students write on a variety of topics, maximize creative and expository writing skills, develop focused writing, organize ideas, incorporate detail in writing, and exhibit varied and precise word choice.
Fluence Learning
Writing About Literature: Comparing and Contrasting Characters in Heidi
Scholars read excerpts from the story, Heidi, in a three-part assessment that focuses on comparing and contrasting characters. Each part contains three tasks that challenge learners to discuss, answer comprehension questions,...
jc-schools
The Expository Essay
Did you ever create an awesome graphic organizer only to find that your class was completely baffled by how to use it? This resource not only provides you with a great graphic organizer for a standard five-paragraph essay, but also...
Curated OER
Homemade Holidays
Foster your high schoolers' creativity - and generosity - with this writing lesson. After reading the article "Homemade Holiday Gifts" by Frances Janisch (from the GALE Student Resource Center - Gold), pupils meet in groups to brainstorm...
Teacher Created Resources
Terrific Topic Sentences
Strengthen writing skills with a introductory exercise to learn how to write topic sentences. Using an informational reading passage, pupils delineate the types of sentences they read and discern what the topic sentence should be.
Santa Barbara City College
Structure of a General Expository Essay
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...
College Board
2016 AP® Human Geography Free-Response Questions
Do your learners have the test-day jitters? Questions from the 2016 administration of the AP Human Geography exam allow for extra practice on topics such as economic activity, national identity and language, and agricultural practices....
EngageNY
Informational Essay Planning: Analyzing and Selecting Evidence
Class members look again at the end-of-unit essay prompt for A Mighty Long Way. After reviewing the requirements of the essay, they use their Gathering Evidence note-catchers and color-code the evidence that matches the two questions in...
EngageNY
Qualities of a Strong Literary Analysis Essay
Read like a writer. Scholars read a model literary analysis in preparation for a similar writing assignment before annotating each paragraph for the gist. Next, pupils devise a list of qualities of a strong literary analysis essay.
EngageNY
Grade 9 ELA Module 1: Unit 3, Lesson 20
The final session in this 20-lesson plan unit asks individuals to use their Quick Writes, discussion notes, worksheets, and annotated text to craft and support a claim about how Shakespeare develops either Romeo or Juliet as tragic heroes.
Virginia Department of Education
Deciding the Mode
Are your young writers having difficulty distinguishing between expository and persuasive writing? Discuss the difference between the two, and how some prompts can be responded to in either fashion. Included here is a simple lesson plan...