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.
Research Building Blocks: Notes, Quotes, and Fact Fragments
Research Building Blocks: Hints about Print
In this lesson from a research skills unit, students examine abstracts on selected books to determine their relevance and helpfulness.
Book Report Alternative: Character and Author Business Cards
Students respond to a book they have read by thinking symbolically to create a business card for one of the characters.
Book Report Alternative: The Elements of Fiction
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.
Book Reviews, Annotation, and Web Technology
Students work in groups to create annotated book reviews with links to topics of interest related to their book.
Book Report Alternative: Summary, Symbol, and Analysis in Bookmarks
Students make bookmarks on computers and share their ideas with other readers at their school, while practicing summarizing, recognizing symbols, and writing reviews—all for an authentic audience.
Powerful Writing: Description in Creating Monster Trading Cards
Students create their own monster trading cards using "powerful," vivid language to describe their creatures.
Choose Your Own Adventure: A Hypertext Writing Experience
Students analyze "choose your own adventure" stories and brainstorm to develop setting, characters, and plots for their own adventures stories and related Websites.
Technical Reading and Writing Using Board Games
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.
Peer Review: Narrative
This minilesson guides student in using the PQP techniquePraise–Question–Polishto offer concrete and useful peer review feedback.
Inside or Outside? A Minilesson on Quotation Marks and More
Students often question whether a punctuation mark goes inside or outside the quotation marks, especially when writing dialogue. This lesson helps students identify the conventions and apply them to their text.
Character Clash: A Minilesson on Paragraphing and Dialogue
Students learn about paragraphing conventions in dialogue by revising their own writing.
A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words: From Image to Detailed Narrative
The old cliche, "A picture is worth a thousand words" is put to the test when students write their own narrative interpretations of events shown in an image.
Using Picture Books to Teach Setting Development in Writing Workshop
Students use a graphic organizer to analyze setting development in picture books. They then apply what they have learned to their own writing.
Using Picture Books to Teach Characterization in Writing Workshop
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.
Letter Poems Deliver: Experimenting with Line Breaks in Poetry Writing
Students explore letter poems and experiment with writing letters as poems, using the placement of line breaks to enhance rhythm, sound, meaning, and appearance.
Writing a Flashback and Flash-Forward Story Using Movies and Texts as Models
Using the film The Sandlot, students are introduced to the literary devices of flashbacks and flash-forwards. They then write their own stories using those devices.
How Big Are Martin's Big Words? Thinking Big about the Future
Inspired by the book Martin's Big Words, students explore information on Dr. King to think about his "big" words, then they write about their own "big" words and dreams.
What Makes Poetry? Exploring Line Breaks
Students read various poems and explore why lines are broken where they are and how they affect rhythm, sound, meaning, and appearance in poetry.
Breaking Barriers, Building Bridges: Critical Discussion of Social Issues
Through a series of picture book read-alouds, students engage in critical discussion of complex issues of race, class, and gender.