Getting Started: Pre-Writing Techniques

"First Appearance," Mark Twain's tale about overcoming stage fright, serves as a model of a personal narrative and gets young writers thinking about milestones in their own lives. After examining student models and considering the...

Begin the writing journey of an evidence-based essay detailing a rule to live by with various activities to familiarize learners with the topic and jump-start brainstorming. First, pupils take part in an in-depth review and discussion of...

Who am I? Pupils work to answer this question through a unit that explores personal narratives and identity. Exit tickets for activities that examine different poems, short stories, and autobiographical writing serve as prewriting for...

Print out this handy reference page double sided and distribute it to your class. Individuals can use the page to aid them as they work on their topic sentences, transitions, conclusions, and paragraph structure. There is plenty of...

Use this grammar worksheet to accompany your instruction or test your learners' knowledge by inviting them to read senetnces, fill in the blanks, and prove their personal pronoun proficiency. 

Bring your learners together to write a class narrative about the first day of school. Start off by teaching them about sequence with a quick oral activity. Then, work together to fill out a story map. Finally, compose the class...

Learners will share ideas about class mobility. They create a timeline that chronicles milestones in their own lives, and synthesize their learning by writing personal essays about their class status and aspirations for the future.

Was Thomas Jefferson a hypocrite? That is the question facing class members as they examine excerpts from documents that relate to Jefferson's beliefs about slaves and slavery.

Support your writers! Clear procedures and appropriate support make this a superb resource for elementary writing instruction. Ready your class to compose original descriptive paragraphs inspired by the episode in Roald Dahl's James and...

Students complete writing lessons to help students select a writing topic, prepare a writing plan, and create an interesting beginning. In this personal narratives lesson, students complete intensive modeling activities to write their...