Students use A Tale of Two Cities to explore relationships, plot points, character traits, and background by writing text messages between characters within the novel.

After researching various natural disasters, students share their findings with each other using glogs, or through poster presentations.

By being present and mindful on nature walks, students write haiku using vivid sensory language; and explore body movement, music and art as visual and kinesthetic representations of their poetry.

In this lesson, students practice a way to communicate without words by using a glyph. They create a name card using information about themselves. Students also interpret glyphs made by others.

In this alternative book report, students identify the elements of fiction in books they have read by creating glogs, interactive multimedia posters, and then share their glogs.

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.

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).

In this lesson students research Greek gods, heroes, and creatures and then share their findings through digital storytelling.

After reading several poets' personal responses to the September 11th terrorist attacks, students write a "then and now" poem that puts their early memories of the event in conversation with their current understanding of and response to the tragedy.

Students consider the perspectives of central but silent characters in Stevie (Steptoe, 1968), gaining much deeper understandings of the story and realizing that every story truly gives a partial account.

Students use the elements of persuasion for a specific audience to demonstrate their understanding of Richard Wright's accessible and engaging coming-of-age novel, Rite of Passage.

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.

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.

This lesson uses One Green Apple by Eve Bunting to teach how characters change across a text. It will also guide students through writing an epilogue to accompany their independent book.

Students imagine and storyboard their own vision of the transformation of Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde and then evaluate movie portrayals.

In this lesson, students use focused prewriting strategies to explore content and ethical issues related to a persuasive assignment.

With a crafty pen, Truman Capote wrote In Cold Blood to create a new genre and shock his audience. This lesson will help students examine Capote's manipulation of language as he forces his audience to take a different look at murderers and consider a different definition of nonfiction. His unique purpose leaves students an interesting text to consider.

In this series of four lessons, students will explore key elements of design in Little Blue and Little Yellow to learn about setting, character relationships, and plot.

What drives changes to classic myths and fables? In this lesson students evaluate the changes Disney made to the myth of "Hercules" in order to achieve their audience and purpose.