EngageNY
Writing Narratives from First Person Point of View: Imagining Meg Lowman’s Rainforest Journal
I spy with my little eye! Learners observe page 23 in The Most Beautiful Roof in the World and practice what they would add to a field journal. They discuss how details from the text help add to their thoughts. To finish, readers use...
Curated OER
Language Arts: Awesome Authors Website
Students examine the writing techniques of professional authors and apply them to their own work. In pairs, they email authors to discover the tricks of the trade. Students create their own Website for their work.
Curated OER
Narrative Nuts and Bolts
After viewing slides and reading about child labor, young authors compose an original narrative story. They practice note-taking skills and work to effectively engage a reader by incorporating plot, logical order, complex characters,...
Curated OER
Writing a Personal Narrative
What is the difference between a news story and a personal narrative? This plan has learners write a personal narrative using the topic of service projects in their community. Consider completing a cross-curricular extension by bringing...
Curated OER
Descriptive Writing: Using Art to Inspire description
Write with the senses! Try using art to inspire writers to consider all of the senses. Here, the class is divided in half. Each group looks at one of two images, imagines the senses that would be engaged, and records answers to five...
Curated OER
Let's Go Exploring!
Use a Courbet painting of a cave or tunnel opening to reinforce the importance of descriptive writing. Writers of all ages use sensory details to describe what the scene depicts as they pretend to be in the painting. Then they imagine...
School District No. 71
Adding Written Detail: Using Jane Yolen’s Owl Moon as a Mentor Text
Access your senses with a worksheet on sensory language. Based on Owl Moon by Jane Yolen, the worksheet prompts kids to find examples of each of the five senses, as well as phrases for inner emotion.
Curated OER
Three Skeleton Key: Elements of Literature
Rats! How are they described in "Three Skeleton Key," and what happens to the characters in the story? Study the vocabulary and the story with these worksheets. Learners complete pre-reading activities, study vocabulary, complete...
Rainforest Alliance
Knowing the Essential Elements of a Habitat
To gain insight into the many different types of habitats, individuals must first get to know their own. Here, scholars explore their school environment, draw a map, compare and contrast their surroundings to larger ones. They then write...
Curated OER
Ocean Life Mural
How many oceans can you name? First, have learners try to name as many oceans as they can, and then have them locate and identify the oceans on a world map. They create a recognizable ocean animal using poster board and tissue paper....
Thoughtful Education Press
Personal Narratives: Learning from Lessons Life Teaches Us
"First Appearance," Mark Twain's tale about overcoming stage fright, serves as a model of a personal narrative and gets young writers thinking about milestones in their own lives. After examining student models and considering the...
Curated OER
Conventions: Adjectives
Investigate adjectives with writers. They define adjectives and create their own sentences describing objects found at home using adjectives correctly. Focus on the five senses and sensory details.
Curated OER
A Creative Presentation
Bring writing to life with this lesson in which elementary and middle schoolers create a display of the imagery they identify in a series of Gary Paulsen books. They read the suggested materials, identify imagery and descriptive...
Curated OER
Sense Poetry
Access your young poets' senses and emotions with this activity, which guides them through the process of writing a "sense poem." After working on a sense poem as a class and modeling the procedure, individuals work on their own poems...
Curated OER
Creative Writing
Students participate in a creative writing activity in which they write about a scar they have on their body. They discuss where they got the scar and describe sensory details about the experience and also how it made them feel,...
Poetry Society
A Conceit Poem
Young writers needn't be self-involved to craft a conceit. Directions for how to craft this form of extended metaphor, models, and a worksheet are all included in the packet.
Scholastic
Comprehension During Independent Reading
Ideal for a language arts class, literary unit, or independent reading assignment, a set of reading worksheets address a wide array of skills. From poetic elements to nonfiction text features, you can surely find a valuable resource in...
Southern Nevada Regional Professional Development Program
“Tell Me a Story”: Moving from Reading to Writing
Narrative essay writing is the focus of a series of exercises that model for learners how to not only read a narrative, but how to also examine the techniques fiction writers use to create a setting, develop their characters, represent...
Curated OER
Identifying Setting: Expository Writing
Your class can take turns describing a well know location or setting without giving its name, and the rest of the class can try to identify the location, based on the details given. They chart the elements that helped in the...
Orange County Department of Education
Poppa's New Pants
Angela Shelf Medearis' Poppa's New Pants provides third graders with an opportunity to stitch together their own narrative filled with sensory details. After reading the story and noting the sensory and concrete details in the tale that...
Curated OER
Build Mastery: Visualization
What do you see? Young reader tap into the visualization process as they listen to or read a fiction story and fill out a graphic organizer. Model this first with a think-aloud, showing scholars how you visualize a familiar story. For...
K20 LEARN
Brushstrokes: Communication/Using Descriptive Language
Sometimes a picture reflects a thousand descriptive words. To illustrate the importance of sensory words in descriptive writing, scholars listen to a song and craft a painting in response. After sharing their work with the class,...
Curated OER
Maniac Magee: Found Poem
Instruct your readers to scrounge through the pages of Maniac Magee in search for descriptive passages or words they may use to write poetry. As they look for meaningful, sensory descriptors in Jerry Spinelli's novel, readers connect to...
K20 LEARN
Speak Your Truth: Techniques in Spoken Word Poetry
As part of a study of Spoken Word Poetry, class members watch a series of performance videos and note where poets get their ideas and the performance techniques used by the poets. Pupils then draft and share their poems.