Students explore the menu genre by analyzing existing menus from local restaurants. They review adjectives and descriptive writing and then work in groups to create their own custom menus.
Cooking Up Descriptive Language: Designing Restaurant Menus
Every Punctuation Mark Matters: A Minilesson on Semicolons
Students analyze stylistic choices and grammar use in authentic writing, focusing on the use of the semicolon in Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail."
Audience, Purpose, and Language Use in Electronic Messages
Students explore using electronic messaging and Internet abbreviations for specific purposes and examine the importance of using a more formal style of writing based on their audience.
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.
Alliteration in Headline Poems
Students will be introduced to the term alliteration and create a headline poem consisting of 25 words that contain at least three examples of alliteration.
Shared Spelling Strategies
Students increase their spelling accuracy and retention, while preserving fluency, by using sound, sight recall, and analyzing strategies instead of memorizing words, as they deal with spelling during drafting.
Found Poems/Parallel Poems
Students compose found and parallel poems based on a descriptive passage they have chosen from a piece of literature they are reading.
Crossword Puzzles
This tool allows students to complete crossword puzzles on a variety of grade-appropriate topics, and also create and print their own crossword puzzles.
Flip-a-Chip
The Flip-a-Chip activity provides hands-on practice with affixes and roots, and also promotes comprehension through structural analysis and vocabulary in context.
To Grammar or Not to Grammar: That Is Not the Question!
Argues that, taught in the context of writing, grammar can enhance and improve students' writing. Offers classroom examples showing how: good preparation for writing fosters good grammar and detail; students can use grammatical and syntactic constructions used by professional authors as models for their own writing; and how to help students learn revision strategies at the sentence and paragraph level.
Grammar Alive!: A Guide for Teachers
NCTE's Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar provides this much-needed resource for teachers who wonder what to do about grammar—how to teach it, how to apply it, how to learn what they themselves were never taught.
Polishing Preposition Skills through Poetry and Publication
Students deepen and refine their understanding of prepositions by reading Ruth Heller's Behind the Mask. They write preposition poetry and create a study guide using an online tool.
Persuading the Principal: Writing Persuasive Letters About School Issues
Students learn that you don't have to raise your voice to raise a point. Writing a persuasive letter to your principal is a great way to get your opinions heard.
Describe That Face: An Interactive Writing Game
Students write descriptions of characters, incorporate new vocabulary words, practice using simile and metaphor, engage in peer editing, and post their revised descriptions on the walls for a matching game.
You Can't Spell the Word Prefix Without a Prefix
Students explore the role of prefixes, as well as their origins and meanings, and examine how the understanding of prefixes can improve comprehension, decoding, and spelling.
The Magic of Three: Techniques for the Writer's Craft
Students learn to use tricolons—a writer's technique of putting words and phrases into groups of threes—to add rhythm and power to their writing.
Solving Word Meanings: Engaging Strategies for Vocabulary Development
Vocabulary gumshoes use context clues and semantics to determine the meaning of unfamiliar words.
The Magnetism of Language: Parts of Speech, Poetry, and Word Play
What wonderful ways words work! The parts of speech are the highlight of this lesson in which students identify parts of speech in a nonsensical poem and then create their own wild and wacky rhymes.
Spelling Patterns "Go Fish" Card Game
Students use sets of words that share a spelling pattern to create a card game like "Go Fish" and then play the game in groups, helping them improve their spelling.