Created By: Hillary Brady, Digital Public Library of America - Time Period: The Development of the Industrial United States (1870-1900) - Subjects: US History; Native Americans - Remixed By: Nicole Cockey - The writing task described here can be used as a diagnostic to assess students' inferential and narrative writing skills. Teachers should asses students' ability to drawing inferences based on what the primary sources explicity show and say. Teachers are also assessing students' narrative techniques, include establishing point of view or perspective, sequencing events coherently, vivid use of language language, and resolution. As a diagnostic, this writing activity should be performed on demand after students have had sufficient time to examine and analyze the primary sources.See "Text Set Exploring Identity, Culture, Agency through Boarding Schools" for more details.

For this lesson, students brainstorm several examples of plots, settings, and characters and randomly select these elements to create their own short stories.

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, students examine Ray Bradbury's use of sensory details in his short story, The Pedestrian. Students discuss descriptive writing, then look for examples of sensory details in the text before revising a previous draft of their own work to strengthen the sensory details it contains.

In this lesson, students write theme poems using their content knowledge and sensory awareness of a familiar object. Students first learn about the characteristics and format of a theme poem. They then engage in an online interactive activity in which they select a graphic of a familiar object (e.g., the sun, a heart, a balloon), build a word bank of content area and sensory words related to the object, and write poems within the shape of the object. Finished poems are printed and displayed in class.