Students learn about the life and music of John Lennon, write a short story from their lives integrating lyrics from some of their favorite songs, and create a class book of stories.
Songs of Our Lives: Using Lyrics to Write Stories
Cut up, Cover up, and Come Away with Ideas for Writing!
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.
Using Microblogging and Social Networking to Explore Characterization and Style
Students use social networking sites to trace the development of characters by assuming the persona of a character on the class Ning and sending a set number of tweets, or status updates.
Walt Whitman as a Model Poet: "I Hear My School Singing"
Students first analyze Walt Whitman's "I Hear America Singing," then use Whitman's poem as a model as they create their own list poems.
The Feature Story—Fifteen Minutes (and 500 Words) of Fame!
Students learn how to differentiate between a news story and a feature story by writing a profile of a classmate.
Communicating on Local Issues: Exploring Audience in Persuasive Letter Writing
Students will research a local issue, and then write letters to two different audiences, asking readers to take a related action or adopt a specific position on the issue.
Our Classroom: Writing an Owner's Manual
Students write an owner's manual that helps them get to know their classroom, provides them with a sense of ownership, and lets others know about their classroom.
Our Community: Creating ABC Books as Assessment
Students create alphabet books, which are used as an integrated assessment with science, health, social studies, and any other content area. This lesson plans looks at the theme of community.
Authentic Writing Experiences and Math Problem-Solving Using Shopping Lists
Students use their emerging writing skills to write shopping lists. They work within a budget, use problem-solving skills to create lists, and buy their favorite treats at the class store.
Writing Poetry with Rebus and Rhyme
This lesson encourages students to use rhyming words to write rebus poetry modeled on rebus books, which substitute pictures for the words that young students cannot yet identify or decode.
Chasing the Dream: Researching the Meaning of the American Dream
By conducting interviews, sharing and assessing data, and writing papers based on their authentic research, students reach their own conclusions on the meaning of the American Dream.
Blending the Past with Today's Technology: Using Prezi to Prepare for Historical Fiction
To prepare for literature circles featuring historical novels, students research the decades of the 1930s to the 1990s and share their information using Prezi, a web application for creating multimedia presentations.
Vote for Me! Making Presidential Commercials Using Avatars
After researching political platforms of past presidents through primary sources and other resources, students create commercials for these presidents using Voki, an online web tool that produces speaking avatars.
Not Your Usual History Lesson: Writing Historical Markers
Students will develop their summarizing skills while learning about local history. They will learn to consider audience while selecting topics, conducting research and interviews, and writing historical markers for their town.
Professional Writing in Action! Publishing Student Reviews Online
Writing professional reviews teaches students to understand audience, content, and publication guidelines. In this lesson, students put these into practice as professional writers critiquing, designing, and publishing reviews on Amazon.com.
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.
Exploring the Power of Language with Six-Word Memoirs
What do the words we write really have to say about us? In this lesson, students examine the power of word choice as they write six-word memoirs of their lives.
Sí, Se Puede: Making a Difference, One Letter at a Time
After reading the book ¡Si, Se Puede!/Yes, We Can!: Janitor Strike in L.A., students learn about labor unions, strikes, and organizing for change. Students interview staff members in their school to learn about their daily work life, and write persuasive advocacy letters.
Boars and Baseball: Making Connections
In this lesson, students will make text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections after reading In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson. After sharing and discussing connections, students choose and plan a project that makes a personal connection to the text.
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.