Expository writing is an increasingly important skill for elementary, middle, and high school students to master. This interactive graphic organizer helps students develop an outline that includes an introductory statement, main ideas they want to discuss or describe, supporting details, and a conclusion that summarizes the main ideas. The tool offers multiple ways to navigate information including a graphic in the upper right-hand corner that allows students to move around the map without having to work in a linear fashion. The finished map can be saved, e-mailed, or printed.
The Persuasion Map is an interactive graphic organizer that enables students to map out their arguments for a persuasive essay or debate.
Student Interactive Organizing & SummarizingThe Compare & Contrast Map is an interactive graphic organizer that enables students to organize and outline their ideas for different kinds of comparison essays.
Strategy GuideThis Strategy Guide describes the processes involved in composing and producing audio files that are published online as podcasts.
Strategy GuideThis strategy guide explains the writing process and offers practical methods for applying it in your classroom to help students become proficient writers.
Strategy GuideThis strategy guide explains how to use shared writing to teach students effective strategies that will improve their own independent writing ability.
Strategy GuideThis strategy guide explains how to use write-aloud (also known as modeled writing) to teach effective writing strategies and improve students' independent writing ability.
Strategy GuideThis guide introduces I-Charts, a strategy that enables students to generate meaningful questions about a topic and organize their writing.
Strategy GuideThis strategy guide clarifies the difference between persuasion and argumentation, stressing the connection between close reading of text to gather evidence and formation of a strong argumentative claim about text.
Lesson Plan Standard LessonStudents will identify how Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream of nonviolent conflict-resolution is reinterpreted in modern texts. Homework is differentiated to prompt discussion on how nonviolence is portrayed through characterization and conflict. Students will be formally assessed on a thesis essay that addresses the Six Kingian Principles of Nonviolence.
Lesson PlanStudents develop their reading, writing, research, and technology skills using graphic novels. As a final activity, students create their own graphic novels using comic software.
Lesson Plan Standard LessonSavagery, treachery, lost innocence. Lord of the Flies is rife with character development. Use this lesson to help students chart the character changes of Ralph and Jack, both in groups and individually.
Lesson Plan Standard LessonStudents are encouraged to understand a book that the teacher reads aloud to create a new ending for it using the writing process.
Lesson Plan Standard LessonWhile drafting a literary analysis essay (or another type of argument) of their own, students work in pairs to investigate advice for writing conclusions and to analyze conclusions of sample essays. They then draft two conclusions for their essay, select one, and reflect on what they have learned through the process.
Lesson Plan Standard LessonStudents analyze rhetorical strategies in online editorials, building knowledge of strategies and awareness of local and national issues. This lesson teaches students connections between subject, writer, and audience and how rhetorical strategies are used in everyday writing.
Lesson Plan Standard LessonIt's not easy surviving fourth grade (or third or fifth)! In this lesson, students brainstorm survival tips for future fourth graders and incorporate those tips into an essay.
Lesson Plan Standard LessonStudents explore the nature and structure of expository texts that focus on cause and effect and apply what they learned using graphic organizers and writing paragraphs to outline cause-and-effect relationships.
Lesson PlanStudents prepare an already published scholarly article for presentation, with an emphasis on identification of the author's thesis and argument structure.
Calendar Activity Historical Figure & EventStudents describe female characters in Disney films, discuss their characteristics, and write a thesis statement about them.