Why do authors write? Practice determining the author's purpose with a categorizing activity. Learners sort twelve short passages into three categories: persuade, inform, and entertain.

Designing a travel brochure is a classic project that will help your class members develop a variety of skills, such as researching informational texts, designing creative visual products, and communicating what you have learned.

Who knew determining author's purpose could be turned into a game? Four teams compete to correctly identify the author's purpose for writing a series of passages.

Your learners will take key economic concepts, such as identifying needs versus wants and the four factors of production, and design a video to explain their topic choice to the class. Rather than have one person in charge of dispensing...

Choosing a poet or a theme, eighth graders conduct research in the world of poetry. They conduct Internet research and select five poems that fit their poet or theme, and create a seven slide PowerPoint presentation on their selected...