An extensive collection of lessons and activities includes many writing, grammar, and proofreading exercises. With templates and worksheets that cover several steps in the writing process, from sentence to paragraph to essay, this...

Whether you are teaching a newspaper unit in language arts, covering the First Amendment and censorship in social studies, or focusing on writing ethics in journalism, a unit based on the foundations of journalism would be an excellent...

The world is a stage, and so is your classroom! Hone the skills of the next generation of Tony® award winners with a set of exercises, reference pages, writing prompts, and excerpts from famous plays.

Students examine paragraph structure, the writing process, and then design a model for the process. In this writing skills lesson plan, students explore paragraphs using the SmartBoard. Students create a class T-chart about paragraph...

To demonstrate their understanding of a main idea and of text structures, learners read six paragraphs, draft a sentence explaining the main idea of the passage, create a title for the passage, and form a graphic organizer that...

As part of an lesson involving literature or writing, have your learners watch and discuss this presentation on plot development. In a series of slides, viewers engage in an activity to explore dramatic structure, including plot...

Do your pupils need a little variety in their writing? Help them build compound and complex sentences with sentence frames. They first combine two independent clauses to form a compound sentence, then add a third clause to make a complex...

Does your language arts class have a hard time with writing transitions? Use this organizational writing lesson plan to create three effective transition sentences that middle schoolers will use in their research of renewable resources.

Prepare your class for the Texas Higher Education Assessment (THEA) or any other upcoming writing test (such as the SAT) with this presentation. Complete with instructions on the composition and rubric of the test, as well as sample...

Take your haikus to the next level with tanka poems, another form of Japanese poetry that regulates the length and rhythm of each line by syllables. Young writers read the explanation, examples, and tips for tanka poems before writing...

After reviewing basic capitalization and punctuation rules, give your young grammarians this four-question quiz to assess their understanding of the most basic English language conventions. 

How do your pupils believe others see them? Invite them to write narratives to explore the image they present to the word. The narratives, inspired by The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, are to be set at each pupil's hypothetical funeral.

Wrap up a study of Seedfolks with a final essay. Writers can draft their essays by following the steps and filling in the organizer provided here. The packet begins with a prompt, includes a few basic requirements, and provides an...

Young grammarians as well as language learners can benefit from a short presentation about using appositives to combine short, related sentences. After a brief definition of terms, pairs share their ideas and combine model sentences.

Teach learners how to interact with both fiction and non-fiction text with a packet of activities and worksheets. After looking over text structure and the difference in text features between different types of writing,...

Enhance a unit on historical fiction with an engaging writing lesson. Learners bring the Industrial Era to life as they compose their own historical fiction pieces based on primary source images of Pittsburgh steel workers. 

Budding authors research a US President and persuade the National Park Service to add him to Mt. Rushmore. In addition to the persuasive essay, individuals are required to develop a visual presentation using a web-based software that...

The answer is blowin' in the wind. Using the resource, scholars read and analyze a model essay about wind power. Next, they work in groups to write an introductory paragraph that expresses an opinion about the topic. 

It is so important for English language learners to be able to write for a variety of purposes. Specifically written for an ELD class, this activity provides explicit instruction for teaching learners how to write a poem. First, they...

Water, water everywhere. Readers revisit paragraphs six through nine in the article "Water is Life" to answer text-dependent questions. They then pair up to reread the article focusing on its structure and record their thoughts on...

What can you contribute? Scholars read text to determine how ants contribute to the rainforest. First, they categorize and sort facts gathered from reading. Next, readers focus on specific terms in each paragraphs of the text Ants by...

Looking for a good presentation which teaches how to write higher-level sentences? Then, this one is for you! Learners are shown how to expand their sentences by using connectives, adding clauses, and how to appropriately use commas to...

Employing the metaphor of a Big Mac hamburger, this presentation explains how to put together a cohesive paragraph. The PowerPoint uses humor, animation, sound effects, and examples to get the points across. The main focus is on the...

It's important that writers leave their readers with a strong and satisfying conclusion. Help your young writers develop the skills to compose a concluding sentence with the steps outlined here. After class members have had a chance to...