LAFS.910.W.1.3Archived Standard

This formative assessment asks students to analyze Langston Hughes' poem "Minstrel Man" and Jacob Lawrence's painting "Tombstone" as they respond to several short-answer questions and develop a follow-up essay. A scoring rubric is included for teachers to evaluate student responses.

Type: Formative Assessment

This is a performance task assessment that allows for assessment of student knowledge of the plate tectonic theory. This task requires students to write a RAFT.

Type: Formative Assessment

In this lesson, students will discuss the importance of imagery as it pertains to writing. They will practice using vivid descriptions through their writing.

Type: Lesson Plan

The purpose of this lesson is to provide a culminating assignment after reading the classic novel Animal Farm by George Orwell (1370 Lexile). Shortly after finishing the novel, students will read famous fables and identify how each, including the novel Animal Farm, meet the requirements. Finally, the students will then apply these elements by writing their own fables that include all of the necessary characteristics. This will not only help students build their own creativity, but it will allow application of the lesson and develop writing skills further.

Type: Lesson Plan

Strengthen your narrative writing skills in this interactive tutorial. You'll learn about various literary elements including conflict, point of view, and characterization. We'll also cover the importance of creating and organizing a logical sequence of events in a story, and the importance of specific details to describe characters, settings, and events in your writing. 

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Understanding Julius Caesar Through Diaries allows students to read and understand Shakespeare's Julius Caesar by getting involved in an on-going project that promotes engagement throughout the play. Instead of simply reading the work, students become actively involved with plot and characterization. At the beginning of the unit, each student chooses a character that they want to be throughout the duration of the play. At the end of each act students complete diary entries for this character, so in addition to documenting the major action in the play, they also report it from the viewpoint of one specific character.

Type: Project

How do places and experiences affect writers' lives and works? Is where a writer comes from relevant to reading their work? In this lesson, students consider the power of place in their own lives, research the life of a writer, and develop travel brochures and annotated maps representing the significance of geography in a writer's life.

Type: Teaching Idea

This teaching idea from The Learning Network of The New York Times asks students to examine the power of memorable sentences. Students are asked to gather and share interesting sentences and unforgettable quotes, including things they have read, things they have heard, or even one-liners from movies. Class discussion is directed toward a research study that demonstrates the brain's response to narrative and descriptive writing. Students are given the opportunity to paraphrase strong sentences by professional writers, write various iterations of the same sentence, and use the sentence as inspiration for writing an original short story.

Type: Teaching Idea

In To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus explains to Scout that "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view...until you climb into his skin and walk around in it" (36). Make this advice more literal by inviting students to imagine spending a day in someone else's shoes in this writing activity. Students examine a variety of shoes and envision what the owner would look like, such as their appearance, actions, etc. They then write a narrative, telling the story of a day in the shoe owner's life. While this lesson plan uses the quotation from To Kill a Mockingbird as a springboard and ties nicely to discussions of the novel, it can be completed even if students are not currently reading the book.

Type: Teaching Idea

Type: Unit/Lesson Sequence

In this animated video from TEDed, students will learn how to use effective storytelling techniques to slow down time in a narrative. First, students will draw a parallel between film and writing in order to identify the principles of effective storytelling. Then, students will examine how to improve their own writing using these storytelling techniques to slow down time and emphasize important moments in their narrative.

Type: Video/Audio/Animation