Penguin Books
Teacher’s Guide: The Diary of a Young Girl The Definitive Edition By Anne Frank
A line from Anne Frank's diary reads, "What is done cannot be undone, but one can prevent it happening again." Indeed, that is the hope for scholars who study her diary. The 19-page guide to the Definitive Edition of The Diary of a Young...
Novelinks
Walk Two Moons: Unsent Letter
Take a journey with your class as they explore the different settings from Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech. Middle schoolers write postcards in first person as if they were the characters of the story.
Greater Good Science Center
Thank You for Believing in Me
The fourth and final lesson in the Gratitude series has learners craft and deliver a Gratitude Letter to a significant person in their lives. Writers include information about how they benefitted from the attention of the benefactor, an...
Curated OER
Bringing Household Items to Life
Use folk tales as inspiration for learning about and using personification in creative writing. Learners brainstorm together in order to practice personification before writing their own poems or paragraphs about a household object.
Teaching Tolerance
Poetry and Storytelling Café
Academics take turns as actors in an engaging poetry cafe. Elementary learners work in small groups to create original poems or stories addressing community issues and read their work in front of a live audience. Scholars also reflect...
Curated OER
Lesson: A Fitting Situation
In the Enemy's Country is a painting that depicts several Native Americans dressed and ready for war. Youngsters analyze the artistic and storytelling elements the artist used to convey his idea. They then write a creative piece from the...
Curated OER
Change Over Time
Learners write a personal narrative that is designed to help them reflect on the nature and meaning of change in their lives.
Curated OER
Point of View
Fifth graders identify first and third person points of view in literature. In this point of view lesson plan students compare the point of view in different pieces of literature, some telling the same story. Students write a...
Curated OER
Dialogue Tags/ Synonyms for Said
Sixth graders analyze dialogue tags. In this synonyms lesson students work in groups analyzing a personal narrative. They enter the words onto a classroom chart as well as their notes or journal. The students replace tags with more...
Curated OER
CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT: EXAMINE EXPRESSIONS THROUGH PORTRAITURE
Students use a work or art as a springboard to a personal narrative or descriptive writing, create a collage to identify tone through art, and use inference to discern what might have caused an individual to feel the emotion that is...
Curated OER
I love My Hair
Students explore strategies to help focus on writing a personal narrative. In this personal narrative writing lesson, students read a book and discuss how the author lets readers know how they feel. Students find a moment in their own...
Curated OER
Writing to Persuade
Students discover effective writing techniques to create persuasive essays. For this writing lesson, students investigate ways to express facts and points of view through persuasive essays. Finally, the students write their own...
Curated OER
Colonial Writing Project
Fourth graders write from the perspective of a child in the colonial period. In this writing lesson, 4th graders create a fictional character living in the colonial period and write about daily life from their perspective.
Curated OER
Wrapping It Up
Class members develop their own glossaries for unfamiliar words in each chapter in Elizabeth George Speare’s The Sign of the Beaver. After recording the word, the page number on which the word appears, and its part of speech, they...
Curated OER
Shakespeare: Henry V - Writing Task
Pairs of pupils choose a person who they consider to be a hero. They research that person, develop a speech, and deliver it to the class in hopes of persuading them that this person really is a hero. A vote is taken after the...
Curated OER
Narrative Prompt
Second graders are introduced to the style of a narrative writing. After being read a story, they use a graphic organizer to plan their writing. With a partner, they share their ideas and decide on one topic to write about. To end the...
Curated OER
Correlative Conjunctions
Students identify correlative conjunctions in sentences and then rewrite pairs of sentences as a single sentence with correlative conjunctions. They practice diagramming sentences of various sentence patterns and then write a personal...
Curated OER
My Life: A Look At Me
Learners examine their lives. In this autobiography instructional activity, students write about their lives. They examine their past, and present lives and imagine their futures. They end the instructional activity sharing their...
Curated OER
Write a Story Based on the Picture
In this creative writing worksheet, learners look at a picture and write a creative story based on what they imagine is happening.
Curated OER
Test Your Creative Writing Skills
In this creative writing worksheet, students use the given picture to write a creative story. Students use the details provided about the character and setting of the story and incorporate them into their writing.
Curated OER
Trek Across America
Bring a time machine into your classroom with this writing lesson plan, in which young writers project themselves back in time and have a variety of choices from that point forward. They either write a conversation with a historical...
Curated OER
Collective Poetry: Teaching Tolerance
Help your class create collective poetry following a simple, engaging model from Teaching Tolerance (tolerance.org). Each young poet writes five things on an index card: sayings from others, favorite sound, favorite place, favorite...
Penguin Books
Teacher's Guide: Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
A teacher's guide for Kindred provides instructors with a wealth of materials to enrich either a full-class reading or independent study of Octavia E. Butler's popular science fiction novel. The activities are designed to encourage...
Curated OER
Responding to Literature: James and the Giant Peach
Fifth grade reader/writers create an alternate ending to an episode in Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach in which our protagonist "loses" the chance to magically solve all his problems. Prompts students not only to write creatively...