In this lesson, students evaluate and rate the relevance of electronic resources as they research information about their state.

Students are guided through the process of taking notes while reading factual information, then turning those notes into new sentences and paragraphs written in their own words.

In this lesson from a research skills unit, students examine abstracts on selected books to determine their relevance and helpfulness.

Students utilize their reading and writing skills as they think critically in order to sort books in multiple ways.

Students identify the elements of fiction in a book they have read and share summaries of them by writing and illustrating their own mini-book.

Students work together to create classroom rules by brainstorming why they are at school and what they need while they are there.

Students create their own monster trading cards using "powerful," vivid language to describe their creatures.

Students play a guessing game to practice using descriptive language.

Students celebrate a novel they have read and get hands-on experience with technical writing by creating a board game based on the novel and writing the instructions for it.

Students use a graphic organizer to analyze setting development in picture books. They then apply what they have learned to their own writing.

Boom! Br-r-ring! Cluck! Moo!—Everywhere you turn, you find exciting sounds. Students use these sounds to write their own poems based on Dr. Seuss's Mr. Brown Can MOO! Can You?

Students explore character development through experiences with picture books. They learn about the connections between reading and writing and apply the information they learn to revisions of their own writing.

This lesson engages children in using writing to their families as a persuasive tool to get what they want and need.

Students explore letter poems and experiment with writing letters as poems, using the placement of line breaks to enhance rhythm, sound, meaning, and appearance.

Students read various poems and explore why lines are broken where they are and how they affect rhythm, sound, meaning, and appearance in poetry.

After listening to the beginning of a story, students use details in the text, personal experience, and prior knowledge to predict the way the story will end.

Students discuss and chart letter elements and write their own letters to adults at school, reinforcing letter-writing skills beyond the classroom lesson.

Watch Mother Goose work her magic! This lesson uses nursery rhymes to help emergent readers remember the letters and their sounds and identify word chunks.

This lesson encourages children to explore authentic reasons for writing by writing messages to their family in a family message journal.