Students write an owner's manual that helps them get to know their classroom, provides them with a sense of ownership, and lets others know about their classroom.
Our Classroom: Writing an Owner's Manual
Trading Card Creator
This tool provides a fun and useful way to explore a variety of topics such as a character in a book, a person or place from history, or even a physical object. An excellent tool to for summarizing or as a prewriting exercise for original stories.
Theme Poems
Formerly known as Shape Poems, this online tool allows elementary students to write poems in various shapes.
Persuasive Writing
This strategy guide focuses on persuasive writing and offers specific methods on how you can help your students use it to improve their critical writing and thinking skills.
Cultural Connections and Writing for Change
A little understanding can go a long way. After learning about difficulties that Palestinian youths face, students will write a letter to an official discussing these issues.
Write-Talks: Students Discovering Real Writers, Real Audiences, Real Purposes
There's a world of writers out there, and in this lesson students discover them as they listen to presentations from local writers and learn about what, why, and how they write in their day-to-day lives.
Blogging in the Primary Grades? Yes, Indeed!
Give students an authentic reason to read and write by researching blogs written by their peers around the world and then writing their own.
Reading, Writing, Haiku Hiking! A Class Book of Picturesque Poems
Students learn haiku
write descriptive poems
and share with the class.
Reading and Writing About Pollution to Understand Cause and Effect
Students get to write a whale of a tale when they complete a graphic organizer sequencing the journey of a mountain fish to a polluted waterway.
Getting to Know You: Developing Short Biographies to Build Community
How well do your students know their peers? Students transform into investigative reporters as they interview a classmate, compile the biographical data into graphic form, and introduce the student to the class.
Author E.B. White was born on this day in 1899.
Author E.B. White, most well-known for his famous children's book, Charlotte's Web, received high acclaim and awards for many of his works of fiction.
Gwendolyn Brooks published Bronzeville Boys and Girls in 1956.
After students have read and discussed several poems from Brooks' collection, they create a poetry anthology for their own family, neighborhood, or classroom.
On this date in 1901, Andrew Carnegie gave $5.2 million to New York City libraries.
Students write expository and persuasive pieces with the help of the Persuasion Map and Essay Map interactives, and compare the essential features of the two modes of writing.
Annie Moore becomes the first immigrant to enter Ellis Island in 1892.
Students explore online resources about Ellis Island, interview an immigrant in the area, and publish their stories.
Telling My Story: Make a Bio-Cube
Let children explore an interesting subject—themselves. An online tool will teach them to summarize and organize information as they write.
Books Will Take You There!
While enjoying a book that features a journey, children write postcards from the perspective of the main character for each stop along the trip.
Amazing Biographies: Writing About People Who Change the World
After reading about historical figures and other important people that have changed the world, children choose someone that they consider to be "amazing"—either someone they've heard about or someone they know—and create a book page that highlights this person.