Ninth graders read and analyze The Odyssey. They apply note-taking skills to identify enemy, type of enemy, and traits demonstrated throughout the book. Students create a storyboard that illustrates the selected episode from the book...

Students participate in an activity to discover how a bill becomes law in California. In groups, they create a school program based on their own ideas for change. They develop and conduct a survey within their community and present their...

Tenth graders examine the role that aesthetics play in the publication of books. In groups, they apply the concept of physical affectation on each reader's experience to literature. They also compare and contrast the varied types of...

Introduce your young readers to fiction written by women authors. For each story, they explore the way these daughters discover and claim their own identities. Individually, class members use the literature to examine their role in their...

Sixth graders experience the stages of process writing, work cooperatively, to critique and to incorporate software tools to enhance writing and problem solving skills.

Students listen to a story, then use the same format to write a class book.

Students write about New Year's Resolutions made about personal improvement, family and friends, and school and the outside world. They write a first draft and a final draft of a five-paragraph essay about their resolutions.

Young scholars discover how to write fables. In this writing skill lesson, students review the literary elements of fables and take all of the steps in the writing process to create their own fables.

One much-needed skill for young learners is direction giving. Have your class plan and draw a safe route for them to travel from home to school. They will also draw places and items that are in between home and school in order to build a...

Do your class members complain they don’t know what to write about? Give them disposable cameras and ask them to take pictures of 12 things that make them happy. After the pictures are developed, they are pasted on a poster board and...

Young chefs follow the set-by-step instructions of a recipe and use their prior knowledge of the body parts of a spider to make edible spider cookies.  After completing a pre-writing graphic organizer they then write a "how to"...

Students read the story Jalapeno Bagels and then write a summary about it. In this summary lesson plan, students retell the story as if someone else has not read the story.

Learners discover effective writing techniques to create persuasive essays. In this writing lesson, students investigate ways to express facts and points of view through persuasive essays. Finally, the learners write their own persuasive...

Conduct research focused on improving a current technology by having students work in groups to investigate improvements that could be made to a particular piece of technology. They list the current problems and attempt to develop...

Second graders identify homophones as words that sound alike but have different meanings. They, given a pair of homophones, are to explain the meanings of the words using gestures, role playing, or drawing a picture with their partner.

How does one use a graphic organizer to plan writing? Introduce your writers to different types of graphic organizers by dividing the class into groups and assigning each group a particular organizer. Then, as they research chocolate...

A reading of Whale Journey, a fact-filled picture book by Vivian French, launches a study of the life cycle and migration of three generations of gray whales. The interdisciplinary lesson offers opportunities extensions into all subject...

Teens and pre-teens are a prime target for advertisers, so how are they doing it? An interactive instructional activity highlights the strategies used by advertisers, such as visual imagery and verbal clues. Then, a short writing...

Teach your upper graders how to use an idea web to develop a topic for writing. After reading a variety of stories about friendship (a list of stories with the theme of friendship is included), model using an idea web. Class members...

After watching part of a Club Write Kids video and discussing the editing process, each group of learners writes a letter to a favorite author. They ask for a copy of a page of manuscript that has gone through the editing process. Prior...

After brainstorming, middle schoolers write an expository essay for a writing project. They focus on supporting points, organization, and writing conventions to develop a well-integrated paper. In addition, they revise, proofread and...

Here is lesson plan 5 from a 7 lesson plan unit on using blogging to create a community of writers. The aim of this lesson plan is to get students writing about what Archaeologists do and how they use material data to study the past....

Develop readers’ awareness of the visual power of language with a guided imagery exercise. Set the stage and create the mood with dim lights, soft music and potpourri. Then read the provided section of Bud, Not Buddy. Next, invite...

Fourth graders practice using a planning sheet for a well-known fairy tale or picture book.