This is a challenging first-time programming project. You'll learn how to use JavaScript to create a simple program to analyze one or more paragraphs of text. Your program will count sentences, words and letters, and report the resulting...

Students will plan a paragraph that states their opinion and cites evidence to justify their opinion about an informational text. This lesson uses biographies since students can easily be able to write down factual information from the...

A comprehensive approach to writing coherent paragraphs and knowing how to transition between paragraphs.

In this lesson, the book entitled A Mink, a Fink, a Skating Rink: What Is a Noun? (Words Are Categorical), written by Brian P. Cleary, is used as the mentor text. After learning the basic definition of noun, a person, place, thing, or...

This lesson focuses on transitioning between paragraphs including when to begin a new paragraph and transitions for different purposes.

This site from the Wilfrid Laurier University provides a complete guide to paragraph writing. Contains many examples along with details and structures that are often left out when students write.

For this lesson, students will describe a setting, attempting to set a mood for their readers in two paragraphs. Borrowing a technique from Stephen Kramer's two-page introduction to Caves, they will begin with a paragraph that explains...

A wide range of math skills is incorporated into a lesson that involves planning a family's vacation to Florida. Travel expenses are gathered and compared, graphed, and analyzed in hopes of finding the best prices. There are extension...

A tip sheet on how to write and develop an introduction to a research paper.

[Free Registration/Login Required] In this close reading lesson, the students will analyze the poem "It Fell in the City" by Eve Merriam. They will read the poem, identify words or phrases that show feelings or appeal to the senses,...

This lesson discusses how to effectively organize body paragraphs. This tutorial lesson shares a short slideshow with the lesson's content. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.6-8.2.b

Students will take a previously created paragraph and edit it to make it better by adding details, definitions, a topic sentence, or a closure to an informational paragraph. Resources include a PowerPoint presentation and pictures and...

This site explains what a conclusion should do and gives strategies and suggestions for accomplishing that end. Includes examples. W.9-10.1e & W.9-10.2f, w.9-10.3e Conclusion, W.11-12.2f Conclusion

This lesson offers suggestions to help you fix short, choppy sentences, combine sentences with the same subject, and revise sentences that sound the same. L.11-12.3 Language Functions/Style

Inspired by the vignettes of Sandra Cisneros, learners will write about a familiar thing from their lives. Students will use the style of prose poetry to describe something familiar around their home, school or neighborhood. The final...

An excellent tip sheet on how to write and create the bulk of a research paper: the body includes in-depth information, examples, as well as links to earlier steps in the process such as thesis statements, notecards, outline,...

In this instructional activity the writer will imagine and compose a descriptive paragraph that focuses on a gigantic object moving through a specific setting and leaving destruction in its wake, modeled after the book James and the...

Inspired by the picture book How I Became a Pirate by Melinda Long, an enthusiastic tale that explores the pros and cons of being a pirate, students will research an interesting job and prepare to write about it. While researching, the...

After enjoying chapter 3 from Robert McCloskey's classic chapter book Homer Price students will work together to expand upon McCloskey's description of how the donut-making machine works. Focusing on a variety of transitions, students...

Students will read chapter four of The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, noting both the time traveler's descriptions of the new world of 800,000 ACE, and the conclusions the main character draws as a 19th century man. Students will think of a...

To use this writing prompt generator, click on the button until you find a subordinate clause that inspires a description or a poem in your mind. Sometimes just one good clause can put a whole story idea in your head! The object of every...

To use this writing prompt generator, click on the button until you find a prepositional phrase that inspires a description or a poem in your mind. Sometimes just one good phrase can put a whole story idea in your head! The object of...

This detailed resource provides a good tutorial on writing style, whether informal or formal. It explains how to get style through word and sentence choice and includes lots of examples. W.9-10.1d & W.9-10.2e Style/tone/conv,...

After reading excerpts in which Buck solves a problem in Jack London's The Call of the Wild, students write their own three-paragraph animal stories imitating London's style and word choice. Teacher and student instructions are provided...