Modeled on the activities in Miss Alaineus: A Vocabulary Disaster, a picture book, students combine vocabulary exploration with word play by planning their own vocabulary parade.

Students draw a series of pictures that tell a story, including character action, problem and solution. They ‘read' their story to others, transcribe it into writing, and create an accordion book.

Reinforce student understanding of parts of speech through the analysis of sample cinquain poems followed by the creation of original cinquains.

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.

Students play with and explore prepositions during a whole group reading of Ruth Heller's Behind the Mask, and then by composing and publishing prepositional poems based on the book's style.

Students compose found and parallel poems based on a descriptive passage they have chosen from a piece of literature they are reading.

In this lesson students explore a number of sources to create a biographical timeline about a selected person. Students collaboratively research and resolve conflicting information they find during their investigation.

Students examine leads in existing texts and create alternative leads for them before revising leads in their own writing.

Using The Giver, students discuss the importance recorded history. This provides context for descriptive writing of students' own history in a lesson that integrates personal writing, research, and literary response.

Students examine great leads in children's literature before writing or revising a lead in their own writing.

Students collaboratively interact with a variety of texts as they define reading and develop their own Reader's Profiles modeled after online social networking sites.