Students "become" one of the major characters in a book and describe themselves and other characters, using lists of accurate, powerful adjectives.
Become a Character: Adjectives, Character Traits, and Perspective
Teaching Voice with Anthony Browne's Voices in the Park
Students analyze Voices in the Park by Anthony Browne to determine how an author keeps an audience interested by creating voice and to applying that knowledge to their own writing.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
She Did What? Revising for Connotation
Did she walk, skip, amble, dance? In this minilesson, students explore connotation by acting out and revising the simple sentence "She walked into the room."
Avalanche, Aztek, or Bravada? A Connotation Minilesson
Students examine familiar car names for underlying connotations then proceed through a series of steps, increasing their control over language, until they select words with powerful connotations in their own writing.
Graphic Life Map
In this autobiographical prewriting activity, students brainstorm important memories, choose graphics to represent these memories, and then rank the events as low or high points in their lives.
Story Character Homepage
Students analyze personal homepages, as well as a character in a book they have read, and then create a homepage for the character.
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.
Expository Escapade—Detective's Handbook
Students create a Detective's Handbook based on a detective mystery they have read. The handbooks include expository and descriptive writing, as well as a letter.