Want to use sequence maps in your narrative writing unit? Young writers work to create personal narratives about their summer vacation. They write a narrative of their vacation and create a display using summer clothing shapes made from...

Use formatting to organize an explanatory essay after comparing and contrasting expository and narrative genres. Young writers explore expository writing by employing prewriting techniques and graphic organizers to plan an essay. This is...

Young writers participate in a game to practice making contractions and using the apostrophe properly.

Here is an amazing lesson on story writing for young writers. After listening to a history of chocolate, learners utilize the many worksheets embedded in the plan to construct their own stories about chocolate. They must cut out the...

What is your idea of paradise? Middle and high schoolers share their visions of paradise on earth in this lesson, in which they view a video segment about Shangri-La. Your high schoolers can discuss and then write about their ideas in a...

Scholars discuss the many ways they use persuasion in their everyday lives and brainstorm specific ideas for encouraging someone to do something. With the list of persuasive techniques they made, young writers complete a graphic...

O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi" is the classic example of irony in literature. Teach young writers about the ways irony can engage their readers with an activity in which they write scripts using dramatic irony, situational irony, and...

Young writers try their hand at writing descriptive sentences. Learners look at four photographs that are accompanied by sentence frames. Their job is to fill in the frame with appropriate and descriptive words based on the photograph. A...

In this language arts worksheet, young writers consider four action photographs, and must write three descriptive words that could be used to describe what they see. The words are then used in complete sentences. An interesting way to...

Help your young writers use logic in their persuasive writing. Discuss the characteristics of a persuasive paper, and have pupils work together to explore and solve a syllogism. They will write a short persuasive paper which includes a...

An excellent language arts worksheet. Learners read seven sentences and determine if each is simple, compound, or complex. In order to practice sentence combining, young writers join 10 sets of sentences to form compound sentences, and...

Young writers determine whether the 19 nouns in the box are accountable or uncountable. They place each noun in the Venn Diagram and then fill in each blank in 9 sentences with the words a, an, any and/or some. A good worksheet!

Use this communication skills lesson to emphasize evaluating a speaker's main point and argument. After reading Martin Luther King's, "I Have a Dream Speech" and John F. Kennedy's speech, "I Believe in an America Where the Separation of...

Help your young writers recognize the importance of composing formal letters. Middle schoolers read letters written by Thomas Jefferson and analyze the components that make it a formal letter.  They will then compose their own...

Full of tips about structure, audience, and evidence in a persuasive essay, this presentation would be a great way to start a writing unit in your class. One slide advises young writers to make up quotes and statistics in their essays....

Review where quotation marks belong and what they are used to indicate. From direct speech to in-text citations, young writers will find this worksheet quite useful. Several exercises at the bottom, along with a key, give learners...

Put children's descriptive writing skills to the test with these fun collaborative writing activities. Presented with the picture of an object, young writers are are tasked with creating a description that provides enough detail for...

What is a ‘Zine? Although the referenced PBS video that launches this study of self-published magazines is not available, the activities detailed and the step-by-step directions for creating ‘Zines would engage young writers. This...

Get young writers in the practice of editing their work using this punctuation and grammar worksheet. They first read eight sentences with grammar issues, rewriting or checking off as correct. The sentence errors involve subject-verb...

Young writers work backward to analyze persuasive techniques. As a class, work through the provided persuasive letter: a plea to an imaginary city council to lift a city-wide ban on fast food restaurants and discount stores. Start by...

Ask your learners to synthesize what they know about Waiting for the Biblioburro by writing a well-organized paragraph. Young writers focus on using transition words and including specific details in their paragraphs. The plan allows for...

Explore the structure of narrative writing with this fun, collaborative lesson. Start by reading aloud a short story, asking small groups of learners to fill in key events on a large story board prepared on the class whiteboard....

Write about another time and place to live with an interesting writing prompt. It presents young writers with the challenge of choosing another time and place in the past and explaining what the advantages and disadvantages of that time...

Think about the roles of hunters and squaws in Elizabeth George Speare's The Sign of the Beaver. Whose work is more important? Young writers compare Attean and Matt's reaction to each gender's role, as well as arguing their opinion...