In this unit, students begin by evaluating book reviews written and read aloud by other children. Next, students discuss the effectiveness of, what components are included in, what they learned from, and what they might change about the book reviews. Once students have a foundation for book review components and structure, they choose a favorite book and write a review. Finally, students publish their reviews by videotaping them or posting them online.

In this lesson, students will study greeting cards to build motivation to read and write, practice reading fluency, and attend to print concepts. This experience allows students to study the crafting techniques authors use when they create greeting cards. After exploring various greeting cards, students have the opportunity to create greeting cards and share them with other students.

In this lesson, beginning writers use electronic communication as a tool for literacy learning. E-mail is well-suited to teaching audience awareness—recognizing what readers need to know to understand a reply message and using the reply function as a way to contextualize a reply and help readers make sense of it. Although the lesson states K-2 for appropriate grades, it can be used for grades 3-5.

In this lesson, students are first introduced to a variety of books using rebus writing. They then brainstorm lists of rhyming words that they could use in their own rebus poems. Finally, students create their own rebus poems and share them with an audience.

In this lesson, students use a timeline to break a larger topic into several events or moments; then, each student selects an event to write about from the timeline. Students first work with a whole-class topic, then apply this strategy to self-selected topics. Students share their writing and respond constructively to one another's efforts. Finally, teacher–student conferences help students incorporate feedback and work on specific weaknesses.