Students tell their life stories in this lesson about autobiographies based on family photographs.
Telling a Story About Me: Young Children Write Autobiographies
Astronomy Poetry: Combining Poetry With the Content Areas
Students' responses to this lesson will be out of this world after they've researched astronomy to write poetry and compile a poetry book.
Q is for Duck: Using Alphabet Books With Struggling Writers
A is for zoo? Q is for duck? The alphabet as students know it is transformed when students create a class book that contains clever associations for each letter of the alphabet.
Thrills! Chills! Using Scary Stories to Motivate Students to Read
Students examine story elements through teacher read-alouds and independent reading and then use reader-response journals and graphic organizers to prepare for the creation of their own scary stories.
Reciprocal Revision: Making Peer Feedback Meaningful
Interpreting art is a subjective process. In this lesson, students write written responses analyzing a work of art and use feedback from their peers to revise or confirm their initial responses.
Junie B. Jones Introduces Literacy Mystery Boxes
Like Junie B. Jones, students will be saying "Wait till you hear this" after listening to a Junie B. story and creating mystery boxes to help retell the story.
Behind the Masks: Exploring Culture Through Art and Poetry
Students research mask-making from various cultures, highlight the masks' connections to cultural practices, compose poetry to reveal their understanding, analyze their own culture, and create personal masks and poetry.
A Bad Case of Bullying: Using Literature Response Groups
Students learn how to effectively deal with bullying by participating in literature response groups and writing about when they experienced a similar situation or emotion as a fictional character.
Thundering Tall Tales: Using Read-Aloud as a Springboard to Writing
Imagination and application are key to this tall tale lesson in which students take what they know about tall tales to spin a yarn of their own.
Writing Workshop: Helping Writers Choose and Focus on a Topic
Students engage in writing workshop, using a timeline to focus in on and write about a specific event.
Demonstrating Comprehension Through Journal Writing
Students demonstrate comprehension by responding to open-ended questions based on the Newbery Honor book Mr. Popper's Penguins, and then draw from the text and their personal experiences to create journals.
Creative Communication Frames: Discovering Similarities between Writing and Art
Graphic organizers assist the development of comparative vocabulary and generate discussions of analogy and metaphor in art as students go on a real or virtual tour of an art gallery.
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.
Create a Great Future: STEM Career Research Using Close Reading
What if students could see the relevance of their school curriculum to real-world, interesting, STEM-related careers? Let's help them create a great future!
The Houdini Box: What Did Houdini Hide? Writing Creative Endings
Students are encouraged to understand a book that the teacher reads aloud to create a new ending for it using the writing process.
Resumes and Cover Letters for High School Students
High school students are taught how to use resumes and cover letters to highlight their skills and make them stand out, whether applying to college or for a job.
Loaded Words: Vocabulary That Packs a Punch in Persuasive Writing
In this minilesson, students practice identifying and purposefully using vocabulary in persuasive writing that is intended to have an emotional impact on the reader.
Creating a Feast for the Senses With Mentor Texts
This lesson teaches intermediate students to "use the experts" to learn how to revise to create sharp, sensory-rich experiences for their readers.
Show-Me Sentences
This lesson teaches students how to revise dull "telling" sentences into vivid, descriptive "showing" sentences.
Playlist for Holden: Character Analysis With Music and Lyrics
Students compile a playlist of 10 songs representing a literary character and explain their choices based on the book's dialogue, plot, conflict, and resolution.