In this lesson, students compose found and parallel poems based on descriptive literary passages they have read. Students first select a passage and then pick out descriptive words, phrases and lines. They then arrange and format the excerpts to compose their own poems. Students create found poems (poems that are composed from words and phrases found in another text) as well as parallel poems (original poems that use the same line structures as another poem, but focus on a completely different topic.) This process of recasting the text they are reading in a different genre helps students become more insightful readers and develop creativity in thinking and writing. Since students are primarily identifying nouns and verbs for use in their poems, the lesson also provides a relevant opportunity for a grammar review of these two parts of speech.

A short instructional video on the Freedom Writers and how they use writing for personal expression and to fight prejudice.

This resource includes one poem, with an accompanying link to the poem being read aloud, and nine text-dependent questions (including one optional constructed-response prompt for students), and explanatory information for teachers regarding alignment to the CCSS.

As background knowledge to Susan Pfeffer’s novels, The Dead and the Gone and Life as We Knew It, students research natural disasters for this lesson. In these two companion novels set in two different locations in the United States, the world’s environment has been changed because the moon has been pushed closer to the earth. This disturbance causes a series of natural disasters and epidemics. To fully understand the effects natural disasters have had on the world’s environment, each student researches a different natural disaster. Then they use these facts as well as safety tips in unique glogs, online interactive multimedia posters, that will include student-recorded weather announcements.

In this lesson, students begin the draft of their essay about Lyddie. The lesson also includes peer critique.

In this lesson, students develop, weigh, and choose the reasons that will lead to the claim they will make in their argument essay.

This lesson moves students forward from the task of developing claims and reasons for their argument essay on Pygmalion to finding, clarifying, and organizing evidence for their claim and reasons.

In this lesson, students will revise their essays. Have independent activities ready for students who finish revising early. Teacher will provide a custom created mini lesson on common conventions errors.

In this lesson, students reflect on their growth as writers over the course of the year using their Writing Improvement Trackers.

In this lesson, students participate in an independent reading check-in using whichever routine you have established with your class.

In this lesson, students talk through their body paragraphs with a partner to articulate and solidify their ideas. Help students understand they are not reading from their planner during this time, though they can use it as a reference.

This is the second in a series of “talk-through” lessons that take place before students are asked to draft their position paper as the Mid-Unit 3 Assessment in the next lesson.

Today’s lesson features students revising the first drafts of their position papers with your support.

This is the last lesson students are given time to revise their position papers in class. Students should be encouraged to ask any lingering questions about their essays, even if they do not pertain to today’s focus on coherence, style, and vocabulary.

In today’s class, students reflect on the writing process they used to complete their position paper, from planning to revision.

Students sometimes have difficulty recalling important events in their early lives to write about. This lesson works to resolve this challenge by having students brainstorm as a whole class, in order to benefit from collective recall as they define pivotal moments in their lives. Once items have been remembered, students focus on details of these events by choosing graphic symbols for these moments, people, and places, narrowing their lists to eight to ten items, and then ranking and graphing the items so that the overall connections and patterns are revealed. The graphic life map not only gives students specific events to write about but also includes a graphic for each memory that will help bring the events to life.

This activity emphasizes the importance of teaching reading and writing strategies for students to use with informational text.

In this lesson, students research biomes and then utilize iPads to create postcards with the free app PhotoCard by Bill Atkinson. Combining their research notes with corresponding images, students write about their biome in postcards as they “visit” the biome.