Curated OER
Writing an Autobiography
Students use their Life Map to write a strong introduction for an autobiography. They apply the Life Map to a written sequence, use guided imagery to visualize the writing process and experience peer editing.
Curated OER
Spinning My Tale
Begin writing personal narratives in this writing lesson. Junior high writers start by writing a journal about their favorite holiday. They read a book at their skill level and use graphic organizers to record their ideas for writing....
Curated OER
Whose Point of View? The Journey of Three Generations
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...
Berkshire Museum
Nature Journaling: Experience the Outdoors Through Writing and Drawing
Step into the great outdoors and develop young scientists' skills of observation with a nature journaling lesson. Given a specific focus or goal, children practice making and recording observations of nature through written descriptions...
Curated OER
Coming to America
Through this set of three lessons about Ellis Island, class members will learn about why immigrants came to the United States, find out about the difficulties that went along with coming to America, become familiar with the immigration...
Curated OER
Ant Writing
Students become effective writers. They need to practice strategies for working through the writing process. By presenting the students with a creative problem, they must choose a position and support it accordingly.
Curated OER
Scary Short Story Writing Lesson
There's nothing like the prospect of writing a scary story to get your middle schoolers' writing juices flowing! In the lesson presented here, pupils listen to scary short stories read to them by the teacher. Then, a discussion ensues...
EngageNY
Properties of Similarity Transformations
You can explain it, but can you do it? After learners view a sequence of transformations, the next logical step is creating the transformation. Challenge your classes to construct a composition of transformations and verify the...
Curated OER
Bucket List Poetry
What is on your pupils' "Bucket Lists" - the list of things they want to do before they die? Their choices of activities for this list could be very revealing, and is a great source of inspiration for a personal poem. The lesson prompts...
Curated OER
How to Write a Biography
Looking for a great lesson on how to write a biography? Here, middle schoolers draw from magazine articles, novels, historical figures, and current events to choose a person, or character to write about in a biography. They follow a...
EngageNY
Shared Reading: Learning About Colonial Trades
Trading in Colonial America is the focus of a lesson plan that boosts reading skills. As a class, scholars examine the informational text for crucial details, use their newfound knowledge to share information with their peers, and write...
National Gallery of Canada
Make a Parfleche
Examine American Indian art and culture by observing contemporary art and creating original pieces. Class members discuss artwork included in the plan and use these images to help inspire their own work, which should represent...
Curated OER
Getting Ready to Write
Students watch an online slideshow that shows Cornelia Funke's transition from an illustrator to a writer. They discuss her writing process from the way she gathers ideas to how and where she writes. Next, they work in groups to choose a...
Curated OER
Letter Writing and Abigail Adams
Third graders learn the importance of letter writing for communication. In this letter writing lesson, 3rd graders identify how letter writing was important in the life of Abigail Adams. Students understand what a primary source is and...
Curated OER
Adventure Writing: Oregon's Landscape as a Setting
Students identify geographical features of different regions encountered by migrants on the Oregon trail. Students research how the Oregon landscape may have affected life and 19th century westward migration. Students write a narrative...
Curated OER
Picture This
Elementary writers practice writing descriptive paragraphs by adding adjectives and sensory words to their writing. They use a picture of a monster for their descriptive paragraph. This 12-page lesson plan should increase your charges...
Curated OER
The Creative Process
Young scholars demonstrate the steps of the creative writing process. In this creative writing activity, students brainstorm ways to come up with an initial idea and ways to express their ideas. Young scholars write a description of...
Curated OER
Persuade Me, Please! Reading a Persuasive Essay and Liking It!
Persuade your writers that crafting arguments is not that difficult. They only need to follow the steps outlined in this resource.
Curated OER
"Knot" the Whole Truth: Writing a Modern-Day Story with a Tall Tale's Voice
Beyond Paul Bunyan and his blue ox, tall tales can be a great way to teach young writers about word choice and voice in their writing. Using Jerry Spinelli's Maniac Magee and the Six-Trait Writing process, they begin to write...
Curated OER
Parole or Nor to Parole
Students create a visual presentation to show the steps in the parole process and define the terms involved in the parole process. Students also develop an argument for or against parole for Charles Jennings and present the findings to...
Curated OER
Pretty Plants Point of View
Young poets use Kidspiration to draw a flower, personify the flower, and write a poem from the flower's point of view. Sharing these poems in small groups will reinforce learners' knowledge of personification.
EngageNY
Completing the Square (part 2)
Give classes confidence in completing the square with a resource that develops the process of completing the square of more complex problems, including fractions and values greater than one. It then uses quadratic modeling for...
Curated OER
Macbeth News Broadcast
Here is an authentic assessment task for Shakespeare's Macbeth. Young literature scholars prepare, perform, and record a news broadcast about the major events in the play. For example, groups may choose to report on the death of Lady...
EngageNY
Estimating Digits in a Quotient
Boiling down any division problem to a one-digit divisor problem sure makes estimation easy. The lesson shows how to estimate division problems by using place value understanding and basic arithmetic facts to simplify the division. Some...