Groups become experts in one aspect of the six traits of writing, prepare a PowerPoint presentation, jigsaw, and teach others about their trait. Writers then focus on these traits as they compose a persuasive essay about a person they...

Your young writers will practice identifying the hook, position statement, and main points of two examples of persuasive writing.

Are you teaching a high school language arts class and stumped for writing topics? Five pages of writing prompts for all kinds of writing should help you out. Many of these prompts refer to texts that are not included in this resource,...

Guide your writers in the pre-writing stage of a research project. Print this sheet to help each writer select an appropriate research topic. They practice narrowing and broadening two different options provided. A natural follow-up...

Get ready to write persuasive pieces! Emerging writers select topics, plan arguments, and gather evidence to write persuasive essays. Supportive handouts are provided. The argument chart is particularly helpful, as it includes a space to...

Complete the steps of the writing process. Emerging writers present final drafts of essays that include thesis statements, appropriate paragraphing, elaboration, and style. They participate in a peer editing activity that requires them...

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...

Upper elementary and middle school writers learn how to craft an expository paragraph by following the six steps detailed in a 48-page instructional guide. Learners learn how to write six different types of informational paragraphs:...

Designed to help writers strengthen their elaboration, revision, and proofreading skills, this 48-page workbook is packed with information about and exercises in personal, narrative, persuasive, and report writing.

Bring a time machine into your classroom with this writing instructional activity, in which young writers project themselves back in time and have a variety of choices from that point forward. They either write a conversation with a...

This learning exercise that accompanies a reading of A Beautiful Mind includes over 20 questions that address theme, fact and opinion, supporting details, characterization, and quote comprehension.

Get your writers started on their personal essay with a worksheet that gently guides them into formulating some ideas they might use. Strengths, weaknesses, major experiences, influential individuals, all offer something that can be a...

Students examine the use of adjectives in a product review, then write their own descriptive review. In this writing and word usage lesson, students first analyze the choice of adjectives in a New York Times article about the iPhone,...

Students write a descriptive essay about a historical landmark in their area, such as the Curtis Center in Philadelphia, PA. In this historical landmarks instructional activity, students use their senses to detail information about the...

Does your class love reading cartoons? Use their talents and interests to examine the process of writing a story they wish to tell through a cartoon. They develop the beginning, middle, and end of a story based on their original...

See it through my eyes. Scholars complete mid-unit assessment part II by writing an essay describing how the narrator's point of view influences how the story is told in the text In the Middle of the Storm. Pupils also complete a...

It's time for your class to literally show what they know! Pupils illustrate what they learned about the causes and effects of climate change by filling out a graphic organizer to complete the 5-part series of lessons. They discuss them...

Working in pairs, class members use the provided narrative writing rubric to assess the effectiveness of dialogue, pacing, and description in two model paragraphs with similar content. Writers then use the insights they have gained from...

Characters in a story are more than a name to remember. Use a character builder worksheet to write out a character's appearance, background, personality, attributes, and story relevance, including whether they are a main or minor...

Poetry or prose? That is the question facing middle schoolers as they begin a month-long poetry unit by examining the characteristics that differentiate poetry and prose writing. Pupils learn about poetic devices and different types of...

Students write an essay describing the Curtis Center and what they learned there. In this descriptive writing essay, students discuss the five paragraph essay and review sensory discoveries from their trip. Students draft an outline and...

Students assess and critique a wide variety of writing samples for each of the traits of writing strands from literature, composition writing, reading and assessment tools. They create and design a descriptive definition piece of writing...

Students write about literature. In this writing skills lesson, students discuss recurring literature themes and then write reflective essays that about the themes in pieces of literature they have read.

In this writing a speech learning exercise, students will read two paragraphs from a speech, then match 16 descriptions of parts of a speech with a phrase or sentence in the speech by drawing a line from the description to the text.