Writing Skills Lesson Plans

Below are listed lesson banks and lesson plans from a variety of Internet sources. The Web Sites listed here have been selected to complement and enrich your teaching of the ELA Middle Years Language Arts Curriculum in the Grade 8 Writing Strand.

Lesson Banks

• Language Arts Mini-Lessons - 33 mini-lessons for grades 4 - 12, with a focus on grades 6 - 8 from the Columbia Education Center. Grade level for each is marked.
• Writing and Story Telling - Sheldon Oberman, Award-winning author offers stories, folktales, FAQ, and tips for writers and storytellers. Lots of great ideas and lesson plans.
• Alabama Learning Exchange Lesson Plans - here is a bank of well written and well supported lesson plans with a technology bent promoting both Reading and Writing skills. Locate the lesson plan according to subject and grade level by checking the appropriate boxes.

Individual Lesson/Unit Plans

• The World of Haiku - In this EDSITEment lesson, students explore the traditions and conventions of haiku, comparing this classic form of Japanese poetry to a related genre of Japanese visual art and composing haiku of their own.
• Not Your Same Old Book Report - from the Teachnet.com Web Site, a unique idea for students to make and present a 3-D Book Report
• Book Report Alternative: Character and Author Business Cards - When students make business cards for characters in books they've read or for the authors of those books, they're forced to think symbolically in order to create a short, simple text that represents the target appropriately—providing a title, relevant images, and other pertinent information.
• Book Report Alternative: Comic Strips and Cartoon Squares - Students tire of responding to novels in the same ways. They want new ways to think about a work of literature and new ways to dig into it. By creating comic strips or cartoon squares featuring characters in books, they're encouraged to think analytically about the characters, events, and themes they've explored in ways that expand their critical thinking by focusing on crystallizing the significant points of the book in a few short scenes.
• Book Report Alternative: Summary, Symbol, and Analysis in Bookmarks - Students love to make bookmarks on the computer because they get to share their ideas with other readers at their school. Teachers love the project because it gives students practice in summarizing, recognizing symbols, and writing reviews—all while writing for an authentic audience.
• Book Reviews, Annotation, and Web Technology - Integrating technology, research, and the language arts, students work collaboratively on this lesson reviewing books and creating hypertext on the Web. Reading, writing, purpose, and audience are synthesized, resulting in a challenging and creative student project.
• Summary/Note Taking/Main Idea & Details - A lesson plan where students take notes from oral reading for the purpose of extracting main idea and details and transcribing them into a summary.
• Letters to the Editor - Students will analyze and interpret letters to the editor, and use this information to write their own.
• Tabloid Science Fiction - A lesson plan where students write science fiction stories based on stories brought up in the tabloids.
• Writing a Cooperative Class Story - Students take turns writing 5 minute segments of a theme until they have the makings of a cooperative story
• Writing Comics - Students will examine the characteristics of and write their own comics based on an already popular comic.
• Make a Menu - Students will practice their descriptive writing skills by designing and writing a menu for a fictional restaurant.
• Character Clash: A Mini-Lesson on Paragraphing and Dialogue - When writers include dialogue in their stories, one of the questions that frequently comes up is how to structure texts that have changing speakers or thinkers. This lesson helps students identify the structures that will clarify their text by using colored markers or online resources
• Digital Autobiography - In this lesson, students will create original poetry and prose and will assemble a written autobiographical booklet in a middle school language arts class. After all poetry and prose are written, students will create a digital slide show to give a multimedia dimension to one or more of the selections.
• Fiction, Creating Characters - How can I use the Elements of Fiction to enhance and develop my writing? Students will explore these themes in this lesson. Students will explore characterization as an element of fiction. They will learn how authors use characterization, dialogue, and point of view to reveal a character. They will then experiment with constructing characters of their own.
• Fiction, Plotting the Story - In this lesson, students explore how the elements of fiction can enhance and develop their writing. Students investigate plot as an element of fiction. They consider how details and events are selected and arranged to contribute to the outcome of the story.
• Fiction, Setting the Story - Students will explore how to use the elements of fiction to enhance and develop their writing. Students will learn how authors manipulate time and space, mood, and spatial order in descriptions of settings.
• Reporting for an Audience - Students study magazines and their audience, and then select, write and produce their own magazine articles.
• Read and Retell - Students are encouraged to bring their own voice and creative interpretation to their written retelling of one of Aesop's Fables.
• Titanic - These lessons are designed for students to listen to, read, research and explore the Internet find information about the sinking of the Titanic. The students respond by writing their own diary of events including a personal viewpoint.
• What a Character! - In these lessons, students explore strategies for creating and analyzing characters. The character sketch is a component of a story and may be developed in a variety of ways through the reading and writing programme.
• Guilty/Not Guilty - In these lessons, students identify the features of an argument and the purpose of oral and written arguments. The unit is based around a well known fairy tale.
• Telling Tales: A Study of Perspective - In this lesson, students re-tell a fairy tale or nursery rhyme from a different character's point-of-view.
• A Framework for Responding to Poetry - This page provides a handout that outlines how to provide an effective written response to poetry.
• Writing Concrete Poetry - In this lesson, students are introduced to writing Concrete Poetry through and example of the historic flight of the Wright Brothers.
• The Poetry Zone - Several worksheets for a poetry lesson.
• 30 Days of Poetry - This collection provides thirty different lesson plans, each with its own format for students to experiment with and "discover" that they actually enjoy this genre of creative writing. Many of the formats contain templates, making it easy for reluctant writers to commit themselves to the task.
• Adverbs - This lesson provides an exercise in understanding abverbs and guidance on writing an adverb poem. This is a PDF file
• Creative Writing Process - Created by a teacher in Canada, Mr. Kirby, this is a no-frills approach that covers all of the steps including: brainstorming, mapping, outlines, editing, references, reproducible worksheets, and more. It walks students through the entire process using one main example and several related examples. It even includes some word processing tips.
• Getting-to-Know-You List Poem - Students construct and illustrate a list poem that expresses personal likes and dislikes.
• Turn Your Students Into Well-Versed Poets - More than 20 poetry lesson plans help teachers develop "well-versed" students. Stage a poetry slam for profit, find the funniest poems around, write synonym poems, more! Included: Links to poetry sites, rubrics, and sites that publish student poetry!
• Fractured Fairy Tales - Students will use familiar characters, plots, and settings from traditional fairy tales to create "fractured" versions, while experimenting with satire, irony and parody
• Bad News Travels Fast - Students write an essay demonstrating how a traditional folk saying or proverb relates to their own lives.
• A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words: From Image to Detailed Narrative - The old cliche "A picture is worth a thousand words" is put to the test in this lesson. Distribute or show a picture that tells a story and then encourage students to brainstorm words and ideas about the image before writing a story that tells background on the image or extends details on what has happened.
• ABC Bookmaking Builds Vocabulary in the Content Areas - Are you looking for a fun, new way to teach content area vocabulary to your students? How about having them create ABC books? Bookmaking allows students to pinpoint for themselves the words they don't know and to use their own descriptions and illustrations to create an appropriate context for new vocabulary.
• Audience, Purpose, and Language Use in Electronic Messages - With the increasing popularity of e-mail and online instant messaging among today’s teens, a recognizable change has occurred in the language that students use in their writing. This lesson explores the language of electronic messages and how it affects other writing. Furthermore, it explores the freedom and creativity for using Internet abbreviations for specific purposes and examines the importance of a more formal style of writing based on audience.
• Avalanche, Aztek, or Bravada? A Connotation Mini-Lesson - Would you rather drive an Avalanche, an Aztek, a Bravada, a Suburban or a Vue? In this mini-lesson, students examine familiar car names for underlying connotations then proceed through a series of steps, increasing their control over language, until they select words with powerful connotations in their own writing.
• Choose Your Own Adventure: A Hypertext Writing Experience - Working in groups, students will read and analyze Choose Your Own Adventure Stories in text or hypertext format and brainstorm to develop setting, characters, and beginning plots for their own adventures. Working in smaller groups and finally individually, students will develop Choose Your Own Adventure Story Web sites.
• Compare and Contrast Electronic Text With Traditionally Printed Text - The purpose of this lesson is to familiarize students with the similarities and differences between electronic text and traditionally printed text. Students examine the textual aids included in a textbook and compare them to the textual aids included in an educational website.
• Cosmic Oranges: Observation and Inquiry Through Descriptive Writing and Art - As a jumping-off point for inquiry and research, students use varied methods of observation, including sketching, to write objective and subjective descriptions.
• Creative Communication Frames: Discovering Similarities between Writing and Art - Build a comparative frame to explore the creative processes of writing and art as communication. Graphic organizers assist the development of comparative vocabulary and generate discussions of analogy and metaphor in art. Apply to a real or virtual tour of an art gallery to develop narrative, expository, or analytical writing.
• Creative Writing Through Wordless Picture Books - In this lesson, students develop their own story lines for wordless picture books. Students explore a variety of wordless picture books, develop story lines both orally and in writing, and share their stories with others. Students use an online, interactive Story Map to assist in the development of story lines.
• Doodle Splash: Using Graphics to Discuss Literature - Taking advantage of students’ natural tendency to doodle, students keep a doodle journal while reading short stories by a common author. In small groups, students combine their doodles into a graphic representation of the text that they present to the class while discussing their story. Students also do individual graphics and, ultimately, write group essays analyzing the author’s themes.
• E-pals Around the World - This lesson provides teachers and students with an exciting way to build literacy skills in the classroom. Students learn appropriate formats for writing friendly letters and e-mail messages. Not only will students develop their reading and writing abilities, but they will also learn about other cultures, languages, and geographic areas.
• Flip-a-Chip: Examining Affixes and Roots to Build Vocabulary - Flip-a-Chip is a novel approach to word study that promotes vocabulary development. The activity provides hands-on practice with affixes and roots and promotes comprehension through structural analysis and vocabulary in context.
• GIST: A Summarizing Strategy for Use in Any Content Area - GIST is a summarizing technique for use in any content area. This series of lessons guides students through learning and applying the strategy in a format that facilitates transfer. It engages learners through online research and writing activities based on topical news stories.
• Inside or Outside? A Mini-Lesson on Quotation Marks and More - Does that period go inside the quotation marks or outside them? When a writing activity includes dialogue, you're guaranteed to hear that question more than once. This lesson helps students identify the conventions and apply them to their text.
• Leading to Great Places in the Middle School Classroom - Teaching revision strategies can be fun and inviting. This lesson examines leads in promininent young adult literature and asks students to try their own hand at writing leads.
• Peer Review: Narrative - "I liked the story about you and Paul. I think you should add a little more detail and you should change the end two sentences so it will sound better." Sound familiar? This student response to a peer's draft is all too typical. The PQP technique—Praise–Question–Polish—encourages student writers to find and correct their own errors, using self-editing knowledge to empower them as writers, rather than asking them to make others' corrections.
• Picture Books as Framing Texts: Research Paper Strategies for Struggling Writers - In this lesson, picture books give students frames for structuring research projects, freeing them from the language of their encyclopedia sources and allowing them to focus their attention on the content of their papers. Using picture books as models, students are able to think more about what to say and less about how to say it, which leads to better learning experiences and better writing.
• Shared Spelling Strategies - Students increase their spelling accuracy (i.e., standard) and their retention by "constructing" spelling using sound, sight recall, and analyzing strategies, among others, instead of memorizing lists of words. The aim is to deal with spelling during drafting while preserving fluency.
• She Did What? Revising for Connotation - Did she walk, skip, amble, dance? In this mini-lesson, students examine the simple sentence "She walked into the room." Students act out ways that the student in the sentence might enter the room, revising the sample sentence to increase the specificity of the word and explore connotation. Students follow this demonstration by selecting words with powerful connotations for their own writing.
• Using a Word Journal to Create a Personal Dictionary - Students keep track of unfamiliar words they encounter while reading various texts. Using a word journal notebook, students explore the perceived meaning and the standard dictionary meaning of these words. Students then create a personal dictionary in PowerPoint® using the words recorded in their word journal notebook.
• Using Word Webs to Teach Synonyms for Commonly Used Words - This lesson uses word webs to introduce synonyms for commonly used words such as good, bad, and nice, and to help students adjust their word usage for different contexts. The lesson was designed for second language learners but can be used with all students, even high school.

Locally Developed Lesson Plans

• Writing Storybooks for Young Children - This is a lesson plan for middle-years writers where students conceive, write, illustrate, and construct a storybook for a pre-school or primary-aged child

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