Middle School English

"How to Create a Realistic Fiction Character" Recommended by Stevi for unit 3: Realistic Fiction

Info-text writing unit of study: Google charts are an easy way to add charts, tables, infographics, and even customizable maps into informational texts

"Teacher Ideas This page features all the lesson plans and classroom ideas I've collected. They're organized by topic, with general education and Dahl resources first, books next, and shortstories last"

Short Story unit

Tools to create text features for the informational text writing unit of study

These are just a very few examples of different types of poetry. Most of the definitions have at least one example of each particular type of poetry for better understanding. All examples were provided by the members of Shadow Poetry or previous Egroup. More definitions for related poetry items may be found in the Shadow Poetry Handbook (link located above). As a bonus, we feature poetry forms created by selected poets as new and challenging writing styles. Try not only the traditional forms, but some of the rewarding invented formats as well!

Fun, interactive game to practice spotting adjectives

"Narrative Accounts Unit Plan "

possible resource for the grade 6 "Whodunnit" unit

"The canary flew out of the window. The canary was yellow."

"Dan Gutman: Revealed "

memoir unit: author study

"Plot Lesson "

Glossary of Poetic Terms

Great for How-to pieces of writing

Classroom Strategies Explicit strategy instruction is at the core of good comprehension instruction. "Before" strategies activate students' prior knowledge and set a purpose for reading. "During" strategies help students make connections, monitor their understanding, generate questions, and stay focused. "After" strategies provide students an opportunity to summarize, question, reflect, discuss, and respond to text. Teachers should help students to understand why a strategy is useful, how it is used, and when it is appropriate. Teacher demonstration and modeling are critical factors for success, and student discussion following strategy instruction is also helpful. The most frequently researched strategies can be applied across content areas; other content-area specific strategies are emerging, and we will include them here in the future.

Metaphor Poetry

"Newspapers & Journalistic Writing"

Writing assessment: Developed in close collaboration with our member schools and Measurement, Inc., the WrAP stands apart from nearly every other available writing assessment. Unlike other instruments that provide only holistic scoring indices, the WrAP is scored analytically. Using a six-trait, six-point rubric, information is provided that can help target instruction in writing.

"The Writing Workshop, similar to the Reading Workshop, is a method of teaching writing using a workshop method. Students are given opportunities to write in a variety of genres and helps foster a love of writing. The Writing Workshop allows teachers to meet the needs of their students by differentiating their instruction and gearing instruction based on information gathered throughout the workshop."

"Using Graphic Organizers Graphic organizers are excellent tools for helping students connect ideas and see relationships between different pieces of information. The goal is for students to expand their knowledge by understanding the material in their own way. Graphic organizers can be used for a variety of purposes, such as eliciting prior knowledge, demonstrating a sequence of events, and comparing and contrasting. "