Scholars stretch their writing muscles with an exercise that asks them to describe the sky using similes and metaphors. 

With descriptive writing, the pleasure is in the details. Young writers learn how to add sensory details to a paragraph about themselves. They read a short paragraph and identify the sensory details used. After revising their draft...

Enhance your foreign language young scholars' skills to describe a house. After reading a description of rooms in a house in their target language, they work to answer corresponding questions correctly. Additionally, they view a...

"The Dinner Party" is the anchor text in a lesson designed to encourage writers to use sensory details in their stories. After brainstorming descriptive words and phrases for the five senses, class members read Mona Gardner's...

Hunkering down in the trenches of World War I, Leland Linman decided to write a journal about his experiences. By reading Linman's entries in the fourth installment of an eight-part instructional activity series, scholars get a firsthand...

Use a hot dog as a metaphor for good reading, and make your class drool! Writers identify the parts of a paragraph, linking them to parts of a hot dog. Then, they translate this knowledge into a well-written paragraph. While a check-list...

Writing becomes dynamic in a presentation. Presenters transform a piece of writing they have already composed about the Little Rock Nine into a presentation. The focus is transferring ideas from their writing into short prompts on cards...

The characters in Lois Lowry's The Giver are rich and complex as they weave their way through the plot. Examine the character traits of one chosen person with a biopoem, which enables learners to follow a poetic format in writing a...

If, then, Else is not only a basic programming language command, it is also the basis for conditional statements used in writing. Middle schoolers try to craft conditional statements with a card sort activity and then collaborate on a...

Practice electric vocabulary using multiple methods. Learners begin by watching a video that explains vocabulary related to electric currents. They match vocabulary cards to practice and then create an electric circuit. Using the...

Add many seconds of beauty to your class with a short film and related project. The resource centers around a competition based on one-second segments of film, and the final compilation that came from the contest. Pupils identify...

Emerging writers identify an informational piece of writing. They are provided with examples of informational writing and view a PowerPoint on narrative writing. Then, they design their own informational writing with a brochure,...

As a writer, how can you show your audience a certain character is showing a certain emotion? Use this instructional activity to practice giving detailed descriptions of your characters and their feelings. Writers complete a chart that...

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...

Use art museum paintings as inspiration for your class's creative writing works. Observing the paintings closely, middle and high schoolers list details and write descriptions. Their completed stories are displayed on bulletin boards...

 Young scholars describe the sensory experience of a character's journey in an essay.  In this precise details writing lesson, students explain the effects on the senses of weather, time of day, landscape, and other...

Here’s a great teacher resource - thirty-five writing prompts designed for high school writers. Categories include cause and effect, definition, expository/informative, persuasive, how to, descriptive, narrative, biographical narrative,...

In this writing descriptions worksheet, students write a description of a young boy pictured on the lines provided and then write three more descriptions of students in their class.

Eliminate the hard work of creating an entire literature unit with this reading guide for the novel Sarah, Plain and Tall. From background information about the author and her motivation for writing the story to...

Model how the sun's energy strikes the planet and help your class relate it to a climate map. Assign small groups an individual climate zone to discuss. They reflect on and research how humans survive in the assigned climate and write a...

Build creative writing skills through a project centered around a street name. Young writers start by creating a unique street name and brainstorming what life might be like on that street before writing a descriptive piece about this...

This is my type of lesson! Learners read the poem, "The Deserted House" by Mary Coleridge, then complete a series of activities which encourage strong descriptive writing and sensory detail. They'll practice outlining, sentence writing,...

Charles Dickens offers an excellent example of sensory writing in this reading comprehension activity. Learners read excerpts from the novel Hard Times in which he describes the New England industrial city of Coketown. They...

Budding poets choose a topic for a sensory-filled poem. Authors describe that topic using detailed language based on the five senses. Then, switch the senses to create a fanciful poem intended to add a touch of fun to the objective.