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Book of the Month - A Technology-Integrated Literacy Project
Students write a paragraph predicting what the book is about after viewing the front cover. They are given a copy of the Story Parts Maps, students are explained each story part. Students are explained that they most take notes on the...
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Graphic Writing Web
Young scholars discuss and develop graphic writing webs, writing supporting ideas for a given topic.
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Fiscal & Monetary Policy Writing Exercise
In this economics activity, students follow the provided instructions to write an essay that refers to fiscal and monetary policies.
Virginia Department of Education
Maintaining Organization, Clarity, Central Idea, and Unity
Introduce and challenge the essay organization skills of your junior high writers with the paper reconstruction activity in this demonstration. Theydetermine what the word organization means, and discover the basic organizational...
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Language Arts: Final Drafting
High schoolers are able to revise their own essays for greater clarity and fluency, adding explanation where needed and cutting extraneous information where appropriate. They are able to compose an academic essay with a complete...
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The Class Garden Essay
Fifth graders use a class garden as inspiration for a specific writing assignment. They conduct research into different types of flowers in photo images taken with a digital camera. Students write a creative essay and draw a picture to...
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Songs that Bring Us Together - Lesson 5
Learners compose song as a classroom effort. They write a one-paragraph essay about "message" songs in 100 years and include three ideas for topics along with the style of music (such as folk, rock, blues, rap, etc.) that would match.
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Introductions and Conclusions
Ninth graders explore the techniques for writing an effective introduction and concluding paragraph in their academic essay. They create an outline of where they plan to take the reader and explore the methods for creating an...
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Pair-Share: Constructing Paragraph Order
Students write with controlled and/or subtle organization. They identify the main idea and explicit details. Students analyze paragraph and essay structure. They utilize context clues to identify organization.
Orange County Department of Education
The Hero: Writing and Responding
Pupils identify heroic character traits that they admire and that inspire trust and result in service to others. They identify the heroic traits of a character of their choosing and defend their reasoning using evidence from the text and...
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Language Arts: Laws of Life
Students participate in the iEARN Project by completing a questionnaire about values and lessons they have learned. They read sample essays by other students in the project about their views on the laws of life. They then write and post...
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American Music Styles: European Roots and African Influences - Lesson 3
Students describe some of the characteristics of country and blues music. They see how country music rose to a nationally known music style. They write a two-paragraph essay on what they think country music be like in the next 100 years.
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Unit Plan for Mark Twain and American Humor
Students create brochures about the humor of Mark Twain. In this literature-analysis lesson plan, students read "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" and other short stories by Twain. Students write analytical paragraphs and...
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Writing Narration
Fourth graders write paragraphs. In this opening and closing paragraphs lesson, 4th graders complete a worksheet to develop interesting opening and closing paragraphs.
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Expository Journal Prompts
Stuck for a journal topic? Download CAHSEE’s 21 “Expository Journal Prompts” as a pdf handout for yourself or class. A great resource for your writing program, print it up and add it your curriculum library.
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Excel, Word, and Basketball
Wow, this lesson plan packs a punch. Pupils interview basketball players, write about a game, and use Excel to organize statistics related to the players and the points scored. Afterward, they create posters, presentations, and much more.
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Visible Speech: What is a Sentence?
Use this straightforward presentation as a basic guide to your grammar unit. With explanations of the parts of a simple sentence (subject, verb, direct object), the slideshow is a good way to reinforce students' prior knowledge about...
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Rainbow Writing
Students examine how to use a rainbow picture as a graphic organizer through the use of color-coding. They produce a writing piece using this graphic organizer. They expand their writing from simple paragraphs to multi-paragraph stories.
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Writing: A Friendly Letter
Students practice writing career oriented letters and filling out job applications. As a class, they review the proper ways to make citations and identify the difference between the various types of letter formats. They use peer editing...
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Who Built the Pyramids?
Students examine the two theories on how the pyramids at Giza were built. They watch a video on pyramids, take notes, and write a five-paragraph essay on how they think the pyramids were constructed.
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Using Transitions
Transitions, words that reveal the relationship between two ideas, are the subject of a presentation that provides color-coded illustrations to show viewers how this part of speech functions in sentences. The PowerPoint concludes with an...
Virginia Department of Education
Counterarguments
Create an urbane battle royal in class with the old Coke vs. Pepsi challenge that develops upper level high school learners skills in developing counterarguments in essay writing. The educator divides the room according to tastes, and...
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Sequencing a "How-to" Piece
In his sequencing worksheet, students write a "how to" article telling how to eat a cookie. For this essay worksheet, students write 3-5 sentences.
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Civil War General Comparison
Eighth graders compare Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant. In this Civil War instructional activity, 8th graders research both generals and write a comparative essay. They include a paragraph about Lee, another about Grant, and one...