Throughout 10 lessons, fourth graders learn how to plan, organize, write, and edit their own personal narratives. In the beginning, young writers come up with ideas of personal experiences and the emotions linked with those experiences....

I Have A Dream ... that after the lesson, all individuals master the reading, writing, researching, listening, and speaking skills the biography project helps them develop. Martin Luther King, Jr. serves as a topic example for a model...

Looking for suggestions on how to organize a creating writing workshop? For topic suggestions appropriate for various grade levels? Check out a resource packet, designed for English language arts instructors, that is packed with ideas...

Poor organization often destroys an otherwise good paper. After writing a first draft, individuals consider the organization of ideas, a topic discussed in the 16th handout in the 24-part Writing the Paper series. The resource covers...

Fill-out a story map to help your scholars with pre-writing. They will use a story map template to pre-write. They also organize their ideas into steps which become the foundation for their first draft. Concrete objects are brought in to...

Encourage readers of Nightjohn, Gary Paulsen's young adult novel about slavery set shortly before the Civil War, to develop their categorization and organizational skills with a strategy that asks them to list all the words they can...

Introduce learners to the debate format with an activity that uses the National Park Service's controversial Channel Islands restoration program as a topic. Class members learn how to generate provocative debate questions, how to prepare...

Young journalists try their hand at writing a news report. They go through the process of developing ideas, and collecting and organizing their information. The headline everyone works with is, "Mystery Disappearance of English Teacher:...

Immerse your class in a good story with an extensive resource featuring reader's theater techniques. The worksheets are designed for both teacher and student, and carefully explain how to organize, write, and perform stories in a...

To practice pre-writing techniques your class will re-read the book George vs. George and complete a T-chart along with brainstorming ideas on how to organize their essay.

Designed for teachers who plan on using Markus Zusak's  The Book Thief, this packet includes background information about the author, themes addressed in and issues raised by the novel, a list of research and project ideas, and...

Fourth graders view a PowerPoint presentation "Setting goals." They use Kidspiration to organize long and short term goals for academics. Students write essays about Goal Setting. Students work in groups and create a dialogue involving...

Strengthen your high schoolers' writing with a series of steps for writing successfully. With sections on organizing an essay, choosing a topic, crafting a thesis statement, and revising a draft, the lesson encourages your class to...

Study the eight slides that detail the steps to writing a research report. The steps include brainstorming for ideas, constructing graphic organizers, and writing the final research product. An example of each step is given on each...

This overview of Theodore Taylor's The Cay is designed as an introduction for teachers who are considering using Theodore Taylor's novel for whole-class and/or book circle study. 

A fun, modern twist on journaling! Instead of responding to prompts in their composition notebook, writers use the Internet to complete blog entries. A sample blog (with prompts) is shown here, and writers are assessed on conventions and...

Does identity come from within, or do external forces shape it? Explore the complex identity concept with a two-unit module for 12th-grade language arts. The first unit uses A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams and "A Daily Joy...

Class members discover what it means to publish their works. Working on a computer, young writers use an online dictionary to edit their spellings and conventions based on the information added to the rubric. From here, and most of the...

Take two. After a mini lesson covering sentence structure and transition words, scholars revise their End of Unit 3 Assessment based on feedback. Writers self-score their assessments against row three in the Newspaper Article Rubric.

Students conduct an open ended survey and analyze the data they found. In this open-ended survey lesson plan, students ask others their open ended questions and then organize their results based on the most common, least common, and...

Students recognize the writings of a prominent American writer. They analyze written text making connections to personal prior experience. Students discuss in small and large groups their findings. They organize ideas in writing using...

The subject doesn't sound to interesting, but with a child's imagination even a trip to the store can be an adventure. The class writes a narrative story about a trip to the store. They organize their stories to include an introductory...

What is a paragraph? This question drives the PowerPoint. Viewers discuss important elements of a solid paragraph, transitions between paragraphs, and strategies for editing. Show this presentation and then look at an example...

Prior to this lesson plan, 5th graders will have collected notes from several sources. Students extend their note taking to include at least one example each of summarizing and paraphrasing. They record bibliographic information for each...