Ah, the dreaded college application essay. Here's a unique approach to crafting a powerful personal essay. Class members read The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Leslie Marmon Silko's Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit, analyze the...

Travel back in American history to the era of slavery and abolition. After reading about the Underground Railroad, young historians examine a painting depicting the event, and write a narrative from the point of view of a person in the...

Excerpts from John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and from John Fante's Ask the Dust, as well as a variety of primary source documents provide the background for an examination of the migrant experience from 1920-1945.

Your class participates in a variety of shared reading and writing activities related to the book Julian Secret Agent. They complete a class story chart, examine how to use punctuation for dialogue, write an alternative...

Students explore the use of voice and title in William Faulkner's, "As I Lay Dying". They identify and discuss the use of image, symbols and narrative voice in the story.

If you are planning a unit on memoir and autobiographical narrative, you should consider this resource. Using Internet research skills, pupils review works by James Frey and Henry David Thoreau. In response to these works, learners...

Gain greater insight into poems using a poetry analysis worksheet. Here, scholars follow steps and answer questions to dissect any poem. Topics include the poem's meaning, theme, technique, and structure, as well as personal...

Why didn't Rapunzel's hair stop growing?  Why did it take the fairy godmother so long to intervene in Cinderella's affairs? Young writers consider unanswered questions like these and compose news articles investigating the true...

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...

Are you Spanish speakers writing a personal narrative? This graphic organizer will help them create a thoughtful, organized piece of writing! They answer the questions and complete the chart to focus themselves before actually putting...

What would you be willing to do to save an animal from extinction? After re-viewing a video about the restoration of the Island Fox on Santa Cruz Island, individuals adopt the point of view of one of the key players in the...

Plot, setting, characters, and conflict are common to both drama and narrative stories. Kids create narrated tableaus that show their understanding of the plot, setting, and conflict of a story they've recently read. The instructional...

Brad Manning’s essay, “Arm Wrestling with My Father,” is used as the basis of an AP Language and Composition exercise. Readers identify the purpose of the essay, analyze the essay structure, evaluate the diction, and unpack the analogies.

Students, who are talented and gifted, create tower structure according to the given specifications that is able to support a tennis ball for 75 seconds but costs the least to build. They each design a tower in their journal but work in...

Fourth graders are taught how to outline a fictional narrative essay. They review the definition and structure of narrative essays. Students use the activity to brainstorm specific ideas for narrative essays. They are given a...

Fourth graders read various stories in their literature books about families. Individually, they make a timeline showing the most important events in their lives. They bring in one artifact from their lives and write a paper about it...

Second graders practice writing. In this five senses writing lesson, 2nd graders describe their experience on the field trip they took to the zoo. They work as a class and independently to come up with different things they saw, smelled,...

Fourth graders identify the benefits of using a field guide for nature observations. They then field trip to a natural setting to prepare for writing. They record their observations, and write a journal entry using the steps of the...

Looking for a fresh approach to an end-of-unit project for The Odyssey? Check out a resource that has class members write their own hero's journey short story and then craft an illustration that depicts their tale. Apollonio di...

Readers use the provided worksheet to analyze the narrative techniques Haley uses in chapter 6 of The Autobiography of Malcolm X to continue the development of the central ideas of racial identity and systemic oppression.

Chapter 12 of The Autobiography of Malcolm X discusses Haley's narrative techniques, mainly how he uses point of view and foreshadowing to build interest and suspense. Class members read and annotate chapter 13 of the text as homework...

Using their annotations and questions developed as homework, class members discuss chapter 16 of The Autobiography of Malcolm X and the narrative techniques Haley uses to heighten the tension and power of the events at this turning point...

As an end-of-unit assessment, class members complete the final drafts of their Common Application narrative essay and then meet in pairs to discuss the independent reading selection.

It's time to start journaling. Scholars look at examples of science field journals. They work in pairs to examine and complete a note catcher about a field journal. They then add to an anchor chart by discussing the different features...