Curated OER
Creating a Writer's Notebook
Writer's notebooks are a way to unleash the "author" in all your students.
Poetry4kids
Five Ways to Overcome Writer’s Block
Every writer knows how terrible writer's block can feel. Use these five writer's block-busting techniques to help young writers get out of their rut and into a better state of mind.
Poetry4kids
How to Start a Poetry Journal
Practice makes proficient! Using a journal of their choice, authors organize pages, then begin their writing journey of on-going writing practice in which they compose all poetic forms including diamante, limerick, free verse, and more!
Curated OER
Writing Strategies: A Writer's Notebook
In this writing instructional activity, learners read 12 strategies for keeping a writer's notebook. Worksheet is designed to be signed by student and parent when completed.
Curated OER
Foreshadowing and Making Predictions
"What happens next?" Using real-life scenarios, movies, images, and other prompts, pupils practice making predictions based on inferences from clues. A SMART board activity takes them from making predictions to writing a prediction...
Curated OER
The Writer’s Toolbox: What You Need to Master the Craft
All the tools (and directions) you’ll need to build an essay are included in a resource designed for learners and educators. The packet can be given to class members or divided into sections and used as part of a series of lesson...
Curated OER
Encouraging Students to Embrace Their Inner Author
Everyone is a writer! Youngsters compose an original piece of writing. In this writing lesson, they come up with their own idea for a piece of writing, revise it, and then publish it with illustrations. This lesson includes three...
Southern Nevada Regional Professional Development Program
A Mini lesson on Semicolons
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" serves as an exemplar for a mini-lesson on semicolons. Working alone or in small groups, class members first circle all the semicolons in the letter, and then consider how this...
Curated OER
Persuade Me, Please! Reading a Persuasive Essay and Liking It!
Persuade your writers that crafting arguments is not that difficult. They only need to follow the steps outlined in this resource.
University of North Carolina
Plagiarism
As many unfortunate journalists have learned, taking someone else's ideas and passing them off as your own is never a good idea. It's called plagiarism—and it's a big deal. Thankfully, a handout helps writers learn how to avoid...
Write At Home
250 Ways to Say "Went"
Getting tired of seeing went over and over again in student writing? Banish boring verbs with a list of 250 different substitutes for that mundane word went. Organized in alphabetical order, words such as bustled, inched, and tottered...
Carolina K-12
The Revolutionary Times
Be sure to grab a copy of the Revolutionary Times! Scholars take a step back in time to report on topics set in the revolutionary period. Events include the ride of Paul Revere, the Battle of Saratoga, and more.
Curated OER
Science Notebooks
Teachers can use science notebooks and other forms of writing to help students improve their understanding of scientific concepts.
Curated OER
Elements of Fiction
The metaphor of a pot of soup and a series of colorful templates remind young writers of the elements that make for a rich story. Pepper the plot with carrot/character, potato/point of view, corn/conflict, tomato/theme, and season with...
Curated OER
The Kite Runner: The Pomegranate
To better understand the conflict between Amir and Hassan, two characters in Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner, readers assume the voice of one of the boys and craft a letter to the other that explains his feelings and concerns.
Houston Teachers Institute
Alice in Wonderland: Nonsense and Logic in Literature
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is known for its fantastical imagery and nonsense verse. This unit plan offers a basic exploration into nonsense verse through poetry and teacher read-alouds. It incorporates activities involving...
Curated OER
Descriptive Writing Using the Book Rumpelstiltskin
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. Students use this list...
Health Smart Virginia
Mental Health Journals
Eight prompts, designed to accompany the Health Smart series of lessons, provide high schoolers an opportunity to reflect on and learn from the issues raised by the various activities.
Curated OER
Visualizing While Listening
First graders practice visualization. In this reading and listening comprehension strategy visualization lesson, 1st graders close their eyes and listen to the teacher describe a familiar place, then draw what they visualized in their...
Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk, University of Texas at Austin
Lesson 10 - Compound Words
Individually, words have power, but when added together, they can take on a whole other level of meaning. Readers learn about compound words in the 10th of 17 lessons of the Word Recognition and Fluency series. A script provides guidance...
Manchester University
Veteran’s Day
Before honoring courageous veterans, get to know more about who they are and why November 11th is a special day. Scholars obtain such information through a read aloud of Eve Bunting's The Wall, grand conversation, and...
Curated OER
A Lesson in Vocabulary with El Bronx Remembered
After reading El Bronx Remembered by Nicholasa Mohr, learners complete a KWL graphic organizer based on vocabulary from the novella. A SMARTboard presentation is a good resource for reviewing the vocabulary, as well as the triple-entry...
Curated OER
Mood
Young scholars learn how to distinguish between the mood of a piece of writing (how the work makes the reader feel) and the tone (the writer's attitude toward the material) in the sixth lesson in a poetry unit. After watching two very...
Teacher Created Resources
Complex Sentences Made Easy
Support scholars' ability to write complex sentences with a two-page worksheet designed to inform and reinforce. Here, learners obtain a brief overview of what a complex sentence is and how one is made; then apply their new-found...