National Endowment for the Humanities
The President Under the Articles of Confederation
The Articles of Confederation sounds like one big, fancy title to middle schoolers. Here, scaffolded steps help to ease novices into understanding this all-important American document. Discussion questions, lesson activities, and ideas...
Curated OER
Telling Our Stories of Giving - Writing to Persuade
After identifying the parts of a persuasive piece of writing, young writers explore different prewriting activities for the persuasive essay. They have the option to write a news article, personal narrative, or persuasive essay to...
Curated OER
Symbiosis: Help, Hinder or Destroy
Use background information and vocabulary to familiarize your students with the concept of symbiosis and the role agriculture plays in the shared relationship. They then write the vocabulary in their lab books or journals, and read the...
Creative Educator
Sell It with Propaganda
Augment a unit on propaganda by prompting class members to create propaganda. Using Frames software, groups demonstrate their understanding of propaganda techniques by designing a new product, creating a commercial to sell their product,...
Curated OER
Fruit or Vegetable?
Watermelon is a vegetable? A tomato is a fruit? Believe it or not, this debate is decades old. Groups examine rulings by the US Supreme Court, the USDA, and state statutes before developing their own criteria to use when labeling the...
Online Writing Lab at Purdue University
Purdue University Owl: Exercise : Eliminating Wordiness Exercise 3
This Purdue University OWL (Online Writing Lab) provides practice with revising writing by having students read and revise a passage to reduce redundancy and wordiness.
Sophia Learning
Sophia: Concise Language Adds Zest!
This slideshow focuses on how to revise writing using concise language by eliminating unnecessary words and redundancy, avoiding generic phrases, using active voice and familiar terms, and looking for just the right words to convey...
Sophia Learning
Sophia: Concise Language
This tutorial focuses on concise language by eliminating empty phrases and redundant words. It offers a video showing poor communication due to redundancy and a slide show which lists common empty phrases and provides an exercise to help...
Sophia Learning
Sophia: Concise Language: Unnecessay Modifiers
This slideshow lesson focuses on identifying unnecessary modifiers and removing them from your writing. Rule of thumb: if the adjective does not tell the reader something the noun absolutely cannot, eliminate it. It provides student...
Sophia Learning
Sophia: Concise Language: Wordiness
This slideshow lesson focuses on using concise language by eliminating wordy construction in writing. It explains why writing needs to be concise and ways to do so by eliminating unnecessary passive tense, wordy constructions, and words...
Towson University
Towson University: Distinguishing Between Adverbials and Adjectivals Exercise 4
This is a 20-question, self-grading quiz/exercise on Distinguishing between Adverbials and Adjectivals.
Other
Roane State Community College: Online Writing Lab (Owl): Creating Outlines
Outlining isn't always an A-B-C, 1-2-3 exercise. Try this more informal system of outlining to organize your paragraphs and entire paper. This page also discusses writing introductions and conclusions.
Robin L. Simmons
Grammar Bytes: Exercise 4: Finding Comma Splices and Fused Sentences
Choose the best way to correct sentences errors identified in 20 sentences.
Robin L. Simmons
Grammar Bytes: Exercise 5: Finding Comma Splices and Fused Sentences
Choose the best way to correct sentences errors identified in 20 sentences.
Grammarly
Grammarly Handbook: Writing Concisely
This page compares wordy writing to a art gallery cluttered with a mixture of great works and poor attempts making it hard to see the great works. Remove the clutter, write concisely so the reader gets the point of the paper. It offers...
Grammarly
Grammarly Handbook: Unnecessary Words and Phrases
This page explains the need to revise writing to remove unnecessary words and phrases to produce clear, concise writing. Examples are provided.
Grammarly
Grammarly Handbook: Wordiness
This page focuses on reducing wordiness in writing by using more concise language, and avoiding extra-long words and sentences.
Other
Writing More Persuasively
This site is very thorough, and offers two printable .pdf pages of some important points.
Other
Critical Reading: Subject and Predicate
Part of a larger site on "The Fundamentals of Critical Reading and Effective Writing," this section on the simple sentence focuses on the subject and the predicate. Definitions and examples are provided along with a section on...
University of Victoria (Canada)
The U Vic Writer's Guide: Grammar: Phrases
This site provides a general overview on phrases as an essential element of grammar.
Grammarly
Grammarly Handbook: Untangle Grammatical Structures
This page explains the need to revise sentences with unclear or mixed constructions and provides examples.
The Write Place
Literacy Education Online: Avoiding Comma Splices and Run Ons
An informational page outlining the definitions and uses of comma splices, run-on sentences, and fused sentences. A great resource for students struggling with these in their writing.
Capital Community College Foundation
Guide to Grammar and Writing: Sentence Combining Skills
Students sometimes have difficulty learning to combine sentences correctly and effectively. This site discusses several methods and provides practice opportunities and quizzes.
TES Global
Blendspace: Sentence Writing
This five-part learning module provides assorted references for sentence writing. This blendspace provides video writing tasks, resource sheets, and reference page links. Most of the spaces relate to writing compound and complex sentences.