Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Songwriting Skill - Finding Your Voice: The Academy Is - “About A Girl”
The seventh in a series of nine exercises focusing on songwriting models for young lyricists on how to find and develop their unique voice. Class members suggest songs that they feel sound authentic and contrast the wording with songs...
Curated OER
When I Set My Hat at a Certain Angle: Trying on Zora Neale Hurston's Voice to Dress-up Prose
After reading and evaluating examples of prose nonfiction by Zora Neale Hurston and other authors, high schoolers write a personal reflective essay rich in figurative language. By incorporating this strategy, they utilize voice within...
Curated OER
Active Voice and Passive Voice
In this identifying active voice and passive voice activity, students review definitions and examples, label sentences, and rewrite sentences changing the voice from passive to active. Students write seven answers.
Curated OER
Reading Fiction
Explore how a writer's choice of words can convey meaning to the reader. Learners read selections and write questions about the content. Each question is answered by two groups of students and the differences in interpretations are...
Curated OER
Post-Colonial Writers Unit
How do cultural and historical background impact thought? To explore this essential question, class members view of portion of the film, The Passage to India, read an excerpt from The Magician’s Nephew, and Nissim Ezekiel’s poem, "In...
EngageNY
Gathering Textual Evidence for the Two-Voice Poem (Author’s Note)
Writers take a look at how to gather evidence from the information text in the unit that connects to Salva and Nya’s story. They complete a Gathering Evidence from Informational Texts sheet to guide their work. Pupils then use the...
Curated OER
A Voice for Hard Issues
Ouch! The final lesson in the 12-resource poetry unit models for young writers how poems can be used to voice hard truths.
Curated OER
Writing Dialogue: Putting a Voice on the Page
Dialogue can really make or break a piece of writing. Help your creative writers craft thoughtful, effective dialogue that advances the plot and develops their characters. One example is provided, but consider adding a few more slides to...
Curated OER
Changing Verb Voice (Active/Passive) Practice
In this active voice and passive voice practice worksheet, pupils read an informative lesson. Students then respond to 5 questions that require them to identify the voice the sentences are written in and rewrite them in the opposite voice.
Curated OER
Writer's Workshop
Fifth graders explore and examine the book, "The True Story of the Three Little Pigs," by Jan Scieszka. They assess that an author's voice and individual style is an important part of keeping a person interested in a story. Each student,...
Curated OER
Writer's Workshop Mini-Lesson Plan
Fifth graders listen as the teacher reads "Voices in the Park." They discuss the character's feelings and write vivid descriptive words to indicate how the character feels about his experience. Students select one character in the story...
San José State University
Old Information Before New Information
Help your writers streamline their sentence structure with this handout. This resource provides information about sentence organization including definitions and models of the active voice and the passive voice. In addition to reading...
Curated OER
Changing Passive to Active
Getting tired of reading student papers that are written in the passive voice? Help to make your young writers aware of their writing voice in this active and passive voice worksheet. They convert ten passive voice sentences to active...
Curated OER
Writing An Article Lesson Plan
Review active and passive voice with young writers. They will use the passive voice to write persuasive articles encouraging healthy diets. The activity includes brainstorming activities for the writing, as well as a homework extension...
Curated OER
Nonfiction Genre Mini-Unit: Persuasive Writing
Should primary graders have their own computers? Should animals be kept in captivity? Young writers learn how to develop and support a claim in this short unit on persuasive writing.
Nosapo
Writing Prompt: Write About a Photo
Practice descriptive writing with a prompt that includes a photograph. Writers craft the whole story of the single second caught in a photo using the provided questions to prompt their imaginations.
PBS
Thomas Paine: Writer and Revolutionary
Is the pen really mightier than the sword? Scholars analyze the impact Thomas Paine's book Common Sense had on the American Revolution. Video clips and primary sources investigate the role Paine had on dissent in the colonies. They...
Curated OER
Sentence Clarity
Give your sentences more clarity by learning to avoid misplaced modifiers, dangling modifiers, and the passive voice. Review parallel structure as well. Plenty of examples are shown, providing utmost clarity.
Curated OER
Voice Trait: Who Is Talking?
Students recognize the difficulty of knowing who wrote a letter from the envelope. In this writing "voice" lesson, students understand the meaning of voice in writing and detect who the writers are in a worksheet.
Creative Visions Foundation
Studying Documentaries Like a Writer - Looking For Persuasive Techniques
Revisit the documentaries viewed in the previous lesson in this series in order to take a look at the persuasive techniques employed by the documentary creators. Small groups watch the films a second time, taking notes on two provided...
Curated OER
Unleash Your Inner Editor
NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, is a writing project for which participants write an entire novel in a single month. If you have decided to this in your class, this resource will be useful for you. This is an editing...
Curated OER
Writing with Style: Six Traits of Good Writers
Fourth graders listen as the teacher reads a picture book that emphasized word choice. They discuss words and how word choice impacts a piece of writing. Students view various passages on the overhead, and highlight adjectives and verbs...
Louisiana Department of Education
How to Write a Memoir
Who are we and what shapes our identities? Seventh graders work to answer this question as they learn how to write a memoir. Full of non-print resources and supplemental texts that range from fiction to non-fiction, scholars write their...
Premier Literacy
Point of View
Incorporate technology into a literature lesson with an innovative language arts lesson. Middle schoolers read an electronic version of original stories or fairy tales, and after determining the point of view, rewrite the tale from a...