In this lesson, students examine and create holiday/event cards, analyze holiday elements, and create their own. The activities help students focus on the reasons for composing messages as they do.

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.

Students read thematically related texts, scaffolded from simple to complex, to help them gather necessary concept vocabulary and background knowledge in a content area. They then write acrostic poems to organize and present their learning in a creative way.

After listening to haiku poetry, students use seasonal descriptive words to write their own haiku, following the traditional format. They then publish their poems by mounting them on illustrated backgrounds.

After reading and analyzing short examples of travel writing and discussing conventions of the genre, students write their own travel articles.