Students rework their forgotten/abandoned drafts by cutting and covering up selected words. By creatively manipulating text, they explore portal writing, a strategy for envisioning a new story or story direction.
Cut up, Cover up, and Come Away with Ideas for Writing!
Color My World: Expanding Meaning Potential through Media
Using different writing/drawing materials (e.g., markers, color pencils, pastels, etc.), students learn how to communicate different moods and/or feelings to support their written ideas and how authors do the same through their work.
Note Writing in the Primary Classroom
This lesson provides a wealth of ideas for using notes in the classroom to promote authentic writing among children.
The Passion of Punctuation
Using published writers' texts and students' own writing, this unit explores emotions that are associated with the artful and deliberate use of commas, semicolons, colons, and exclamation points (end-stop marks of punctuation).
Literature Response in Primary Classrooms
This step-by-step literature response template for use with read-alouds asks students to use drawing and writing to respond to increasingly-complex prompts which address literary elements as well as personal connections.
Rosa Parks was born on this day in 1913.
Rosa Parks was committed to the struggle for social justice and human rights until her death, inspiring millions of people around the world. Today, we celebrate her!
Stapleless Book
The Stapleless Book can be used for taking notes while reading, making picture books, collecting facts, or creating vocabulary booklets . . . the possibilities are endless!
Power of Picture Books, The: Using Content Area Literature in Middle School
Featuring descriptions and activities for fifty exceptional titles, Mary Jo Fresch and Peggy Harkins offer a wealth of ideas for harnessing the power of picture books to improve reading and writing in the content areas.
Tim O'Brien in the Classroom: "This too is true: Stories can save us"
As part of the NCTE High School Literature Series, Tim O'Brien in the Classroom focuses on opportunities for classroom discussion and writing assignments, including lessons, open-ended prompts, and student writing samples.
Language Learners in the English Classroom
This book provides practical, research-based strategies that can help secondary-level English language learners meet the challenges of both language and content learning.
A Musical Prompt: Postcards From the Concert
Students won't miss a beat in this musical lesson that combines listening with personal response on a postcard.
Guided Comprehension: Previewing Using an Anticipation Guide
Based on the Guided Comprehension Model developed by Maureen McLaughlin and Mary Beth Allen, this lesson introduces students to the comprehension strategy of previewing.
Magazine Redux: An Exercise in Critical Literacy
Paper and pixels get compared in this lesson in which students compare both printed and online versions of a magazine.
Fact or Fiction: Learning About Worms Using Diary of a Worm
Students often believe that fiction writers make everything up, seldom realizing how research worms its way into entertaining writing. In this lesson, students read Diary of a Worm to find out how fact merges with fiction.
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.
Timelines and Texts: Motivating Students to Read Nonfiction
In an effort to help motivate students to read nonfiction, students are challenged to use a timeline to help them name the year when certain products were invented.
Name Talk: Exploring Letter-Sound Knowledge in the Primary Classroom
Students demonstrate their letter/sound knowledge by working with name cards and sharing observations about their classmates' names, giving teachers an opportunity to assess knowledge in a meaningful context.
When I Was Young In...A Literature to Language Experience
Past meets present in this lesson in which students practice verb tense when they write personal short stories that they then publish in a flip book.
Learning About Research and Writing Using the American Revolution
Students across the board will get a kick out of researching a historical figure from the American Revolution to create an acrostic poem.
Collaborating, Writing, Linking: Using Wikis to Tell Stories Online
Students become online authors in this lesson in which they write and post a short story using wiki technology.