Using different writing/drawing materials (e.g., markers, color pencils, pastels, etc.), students learn how to communicate different moods and/or feelings to support their written ideas and how authors do the same through their work.

Students are often asked to perform speeches, but rarely do we require students to analyze speeches as carefully as we study works of literature. In this unit, students are required to identify the rhetorical strategies in a famous speech and the specific purpose for each chosen device. They will write an essay about its effectiveness and why it is still famous after all these years.

Students create a checklist outlining what effective writers do, revise his or her own writing, and engage in a written conversation to help peers with the revision process.

Students become novice lexicographers as they explore recent new entries to the dictionary, learn the process of writing entries for the Oxford English Dictionary, and write a new entry themselves.

Students create brochures on the same topic as another piece of writing they have done, highlighting how shifting purposes and audiences creates changes in their strategies as writers.

Creating a memoir of an older family member allows students both to learn more about their own backgrounds and to learn the power of storytellers.

Students learn how to differentiate between a news story and a feature story by writing a profile of a classmate.

Students explore the concepts of audience and purpose by focusing on an issue that divided Americans in 1925, the debate of evolution versus creationism raised by the Scopes Monkey Trial.

Students explore the idea of "different Englishes" by reading Amy Tan's "Mother Tongue" and writing literacy narratives about their own use of different language for different audiences and purposes.

Working in small groups, students read and discuss Elie Wiesel's memoir Night and then take turns assuming the "teacher" role, as the class works with four different comprehension strategies.

Writing a review of an author's work challenges students to develop their critical thinking skills. It provides an opportunity for students to speak their minds—and to enjoy being heard.

Students use text sets to research a topic inspired by a fiction book they have read. A text set is a collection of multiple text genres with a single focus.

After exploring several question and answer books on a variety of topics, students research a topic and create their own class question and answer book.

Students read and analyze technology reviews to establish the characteristics of the genre. They then compose their own reviews on a technology of their choice.

Students analyze World War II posters, as a group and then independently, to explore how argument, persuasion and propaganda differ.

During interactive read-aloud sessions, students identify how an author conveys mathematical information about animals' sizes and abilities. They then conduct research projects focusing on the same mathematical concepts.

Students adopt a skeptical stance and become weather detectives who ask "Why?" and "Why not?" as they investigate the history and validity of some common weather sayings.

Using Snowflake Bentley as a model, students create a working definition of multigenre text and then use that definition to create their own multigenre piece about winter or another theme.

This lesson pairs the reading of historical fiction with nonfiction to introduce students to the large themes of history.

Students read The Jolly Postman, in which a postman delivers letters to storybook characters. They explore different types of mail and categorize letters from the book and their own mail.