This lesson focuses on strategies for moving essay writing beyond the five-paragraph essay structure to one whose structure is determined by the content. W.11-12.4 Clear/Coherent Writing

Learn to write a five-paragraph persuasive essay by working through six links to videos, graphic organizers, and activities on space exploration.

This lesson focuses on the difference between formulaic writing such as the five-paragraph essay and an organic structure that puts forward an arguable statement.

In this lesson, the book entitled A Mink, a Fink, a Skating Rink: What Is a Noun? (Words Are Categorical), written by Brian P. Cleary, is used as the mentor text. After learning the basic definition of noun, a person, place, thing, or...

This multi-day jigsaw activity engages middle schoolers in summary writing. Students will work in small groups after direct instruction and write short summary paragraphs. Middle schoolers will refer to the 'Five Rules For Writing a...

A tip sheet on how to create and outline for a research paper.

This tutorial focuses on supporting details using a video of a paragraph from a book showing the topic sentence and two strong, reliable, supporting details. This is followed by a slideshow that stresses the need for variety in the types...

Two slideshows and a screencast on organizational patterns used when writing essays and speeches. The first is a 20-slide presentation explaining the seven most common organizational patterns used in writing: time sequence, spatial,...