Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery" provides middle schoolers with an opportunity to hone their close reading and literary analysis skills. After annotating their copy of the story, writer's craft an essay in which they analyze...

This lesson has students create an end-of-year reflective pentalogue (five personal beliefs). The list is to be about five different things each student has learned in the past year about what makes good, high-quality writing. A revised...