Mustang Composition

We need to think of some new essay topics for 9th grade comp. courses. This lists 200 prompts that are relevant to students today.

I think some of these teaching ideas would be interesting to get my students involved in thinking about argument. I could model a paper about eating bugs.

MC assessment Includes parts of speech, usage, confused words, punctuation, parallel structure, correct modification, etc. 77 questions provide instant feedback upon submission.

Articles from all over the internet; wide variety of topics and interests. These articles have been tagged as "intermediate" -- texts and audio provided.

This is a collection of 6 Traits rubrics we might be able to adapt for our needs.

From the Ready Theory people, this site has plenty of pdf's on parts of speech, paragraph correction, and writing practice.

Includes excellent handouts and worksheets for editing, revising, grammar, etc. We can use some of these for assessments via Quia.

Pearson chapter with exercises

This PDF shows how to compare and contrast. It emphasizes "What's the point?!" It also helps students write a paragraph step by step.

Comparison Paragraphs Organized by Subtopic Another way of organizing a comparison is not according to supporting details that are similar, but according to subtopic. (A subtopic is a main example, or main supporting idea, that illustrates the topic sentence of a paragraph. For more about supporting details, click here.)

Use the following proofreading guide to weed common errors. Until you use them automatically, you may find it helpful to remember the steps using the acronym "SWAPS."

This is a collection of paragraphs that have been scrambled. We can use these for assessments on "Reordering" information to improve coherence. Apparently this skill is part of an entrance exam to exclusive schools in New York.

From the Tongue Untied website. The approach is more on the functional grammar side, so students have to identify how the noun is working: direct object, indirect object, predicate noun, object of preposition, subject.

This packet already has word choice exercises on specific nouns, action verbs, and vivid adjectives for students to complete.

Excellent repository of high interest texts from around the internet; text and audio provided. This particular collection is categorized as "advanced" reading.

Comprehensive lesson on comparison contrast writing

Excellent resource for creating quick quizzes.