This resource provides a lesson designed to utilze letter and wordplay as students create a poem as a class. Afterwards, students will work independently to draft a word poem of their own.

Having students extract and create meaning out of words is a gift and task.  This gets them working with diction and figurative language then reflecting on the choices they made in their own written creations.

In this lesson, students learn the characteristics of ballad poetry - song-like poems that tell long stories. Students write their own ballads, composing in quatrains stories that may fit with some of the common themes of classic examples of the structure.

This lesson uses creatures created from students' imaginations to teach hyperbole, simile, metaphor, and alliteration in association with creative writing.

This lesson plan helps students review the elements of characterization and create original characters that jump off the page. Students work in pairs to revise previously created characters in order to enhance their characterization.

In this lesson, students experiment with creating mood in their stories using digital photographs for inspiration. Students examine a list of mood words, then try to write and create moods that match the photos they see. Students may optionally read from a list of short stories that all excel at creating mood.

In this lesson, students explore their creativity by outlining and writing the first chapter for a children's book. Students first read and discuss the tone of the beginning of a famous children's book before creating ideas and sharing them with the class.

In this lesson plan, students create their own monster in the vein of the creation from Frankenstein and analyze the novel in any number of ways.

In this lesson, students read The Houdini Box by Brian Selznick. Students then follow the steps of the writing process to create a new ending for this book. Students gain experience brainstorming, drafting, editing, and polishing their writing. Because their story endings must flow well with the rest of the book, students must understand what the book is about. The goal is for them to understand what they’re reading and to demonstrate their knowledge of the book’s content and their own creativity through a writing piece.

This lesson plan encourages students to examine point of view by writing an eyewitness account. This lesson plan can be used with any novel the students might happen to be reading - students choose a character from whose perspective they'd be interested in examining things.

Students work with primary documents and latter-day photographs to recapture the experience of traveling on the Oregon Trail.

In this lesson, students work to revise their writing to include more details - showing the reader, instead of telling them. Students work to revise based on a series of 'interview' questions, then work with partners to finalize their work.

In this lesson plan, students analyze important speeches from past presidents. Students then attempt to write a speech for the current president.

In this lesson, students learn or review the elements of a plot by writing their own short stories. To avoid the common problem of students having difficulty ending their stories, students start at the end and work their way backwards through the plot chart to the exposition of the story.

In this lesson, students explore how to write from an object’s perspective. The teacher uses a picture book, Dear Mrs. La Rue, to introduce the idea of writing from a non-human’s perspective. A mini-lesson follows in which students work together to define the word "perspective." Students collaboratively write and share a short example of writing from a pencil sharpener’s perspective. Students ultimately write their own stories from an object’s perspective after reading the model story. This lesson takes multiple days as students prewrite, draft, revise, edit, and publish their stories.

In this lesson plan, students summarize a recently completed writing assignment using a haiku poem. Haiku are well-suited to this task becuase they force students to carefully consider the value of each word, since they are so strictly limited.

This lesson helps students improve their use of sensory details when writing stories. Teachers model effective use of sensory details before students practice on their own.

In this lesson, students explore Romeo and Juliet casually en route to a conversation about the relevance of such an old story to today's youth. Students learn some of the plot details of the play before writing their own creative dialogue about tragic romance.

In this lesson, students review the definition of imagery and look at some examples before practicing their own use of imagery by revising boring sentences with better examples of imagery.

In this lesson, students review the concept of dialogue and write original dialogue based on a prompt. Students then work in pairs to revise their writing for clarity and quality.