First graders identify details that make reading and writing more interesting. They classify events, people, places, and things and attach specific characteristics to each one. Everyone generates describing words on a worksheet that's...

What would you do if you got an extra day every week? Partners share some information about their routines and lives and write compositions about one another based on the information. Each partner tries to guess what the other person...

From British accents to Texan drawls, a character's dialect can be an important part of the reading experience. A Six-Trait writing activity guides learners through the analysis of a character's dialect (Daniel Keyes's Flowers for...

Combine participial phrases and creative writing with this instructional activity, which is equally helpful for writing skills and conventions. After a mini-instructional activity on participial phrases and reading the picture book...

Direct your class’s attention to the elements that make their community unique. After examining sample travel brochures, groups select something from their community to use as the subject, and then research, create, and publish a...

Narrative essay writing is the focus of a series of exercises that model for learners how to not only read a narrative, but how to also examine the techniques fiction writers use to create a setting, develop their characters, represent...

Students become familiar with the historical and sociological aspects of the boarding house phenomenon in America. As students work in groups, they read and analyze documents that will help them gain a deeper understanding. To...

Students explore acrostic poems. In this interactive poetry lesson, students visit the ReadWriteThink.org website to view characteristics and samples of acrostic poems. Students develop acrostic poems by using the interactive site.

Here is lesson 5 from a 7 lesson unit on using blogging to create a community of writers. The aim of this lesson is to get students writing about what Archaeologists do and how they use material data to study the past. They compose a...

Pair learners to define synonyms. They search flash cards to find a synonym partner. Then they chart pairs of synonyms on a synonym tree.

Students write a topic sentence to a paragraph and explain that it introduces the main idea. After a whole-class demonstration, students write a complete paragraph with their topic sentence and supporting sentences. There are some...

Sarah Stewart’s The Gardener and Food from Farms by Nancy Dickmann display the importance of community farms. After reading these short picture books, class members draw connections between farms and the food we eat each day. As a...

Designed to be spread across multiple days, this mini-unit gives learners an opportunity to develop family related vocabulary. Start by reading selected pages from "Family Pictures-Cuadros de familia" by Carmen Lomas Garza, and then...

What must a sentence contain in order to be complete? What different types of sentences exist? Look at declarative, interrogative, and exclamatory sentences with this 17-slide presentation. Several example sentences are shown, and the...

Second graders identify homophones as words that sound alike but have different meanings. They, given a pair of homophones, are to explain the meanings of the words using gestures, role playing, or drawing a picture with their partner.

Guide your readers to explore character traits. As a class, discuss and record the traits of a commonly-known fairy tale character. Then do the same with the main character in the class novel. Finally, have learners use magazines...

Interactive SMART Board activities provide young grammarians with practice changing singular nouns to plural nouns. Learners then create collages on which they inscribe the singular and plural form of the noun label.

Incorporate a research project into your study of Shakespeare and the Renaissance Period. Class members assume the role of an apprentice seeking membership in one of the various guilds that existed during the Renaissance period....

Before your high schoolers read Julius Caesar, have them complete this thought-provoking activity! To familiarize them with some of the play's most important lines, break the class into pairs and have them create a skit around...

Use picture cues as a tool in order to create meaning along with text. With a wordless comic, young illustrators discuss the main idea and character traits, and independently write a summary for a page of a wordless comic. This strategy...

Illustrate the importance of specific details and clear directions. Sitting back-to-back, partners take turns building a Lego structure and giving directions to their partners to create an identical structure. The subsequent discussion...

Write a review of the film adaptation of Holes. After viewing the film, your young reviewers make recommendations about viewing the film. Using details to support their opinions, they highlight the important parts of the movie without...

Polish organization skills in your youngsters. With this lesson, they are introduced to the trait of organization and participate in activities that reinforce organization. They cut apart a familiar story, receive different...

Bruce Springsteen’s “My Hometown” and Billy Joel’s “Allentown” motivate young lyricists to craft poems about their own home town. Groups compare the two songs, identifying details, symbols, and conflicts. Individuals then picture a place...