The world is a stage, and so is your classroom! Hone the skills of the next generation of Tony® award winners with a set of exercises, reference pages, writing prompts, and excerpts from famous plays.

First, learners discuss the difference between short- and long-term goals, then they establish their own financial goals. They fill out a financial goal worksheet, create a long-term goal collage, and respond to a writing prompt defining...

Calling all fraction novices! Use sets of objects to introduce scholars to fractions before they even have learned about numerators and denominators (but this is a great way to introduce these terms!). The first section has four...

Fourth graders view a PowerPoint presentation "Setting goals." They use Kidspiration to organize long and short term goals for academics. Students write essays about Goal Setting. Students work in groups and create a dialogue involving...

After completing John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, groups are assigned a chapter to reread. Members list major conflicts and events and quote setting details. They then make observations about how the setting prepares the reader for the...

Are you working on an autobiographical or narrative writing unit? Bring this lesson to your class, as it takes young writers through the process of drafting and sequencing an autobiography. After observing and demonstrating steps of the...

Fifth graders develop and practice the steps involved in imaginative writing. They follow the steps/worksheets included and write imaginative stories of their own.

Help your middle-schoolers expand their writing skills with this lesson on episodic writing, which focuses on story details, idea development, and organization. After reading "The Eighth Picture: End of Summer" from Patricia Reilly...

How do you catch a leprechaun? Let your writers decide with a resource that has them thinking about story elements and writing creatively. Learners plan their writing in two graphic organizers—one with setting, characters, problem, and...

Print out this handy reference page double sided and distribute it to your class. Individuals can use the page to aid them as they work on their topic sentences, transitions, conclusions, and paragraph structure. There is plenty of...

Help your class better understand the concept of fractions as part/whole with this interesting presentation. Fractions are likened to part/whole of a set of objects. A set of jewels is displayed, where one out of the three jewels is red,...

A strong community acts as a family during difficult times. The evidence for the family aspects of Maycomb is abundant in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, and it is the focus of a lesson on the importance of setting as it relates...

Continue working through Esperanza Rising, by Pam Munoz Ryan, by looking into language choices and discussing text-dependent questions. Pupils converse in small groups and as a class about plot, setting, and figurative language. Using...

Bring this lesson into your unit about creative writing and precise language. First, middle schoolers create a piece of writing with the help of their classmates. In the second part of this workshop, they edit their own piece of writing....

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...

No matter how difficult high school writing may seem, college writing presents challenges of its own. The fourth in a series of 24 handouts from The Writing Center at UNC breaks down the expectations for college writing. Scholars learn...

Ever have students complain that they don't know how to write a poem? Turn those complaints into magnificent works of writing with an independent poetry lesson about not being able to write poetry.

Practice expository and creative writing with your class. Pupils use magazines to find pictures, cut them out, and create a collage. This work of art is then used as a writing prompt. They describe the collage in either a creative or...

Help your young writers use logic in their persuasive writing. Discuss the characteristics of a persuasive paper, and have pupils work together to explore and solve a syllogism. They will write a short persuasive paper which includes a...

Using chapter 1 of Jerry Spinelli's Milkweed, middle schoolers write a personal memoir based on Spinelli's style and a Six Trait writing activity. The instructional activity suggests several ways to activate prior knowledge, including a...

Develop novice script-writers. Small groups sift through a sample script, noting any script-writing conventions to share with the whole class. Using these conventions and plot structures, these groups compose a script for a 10-minute...