Alabama ELA Standard: 3.LF.41

Every great author sounds like no one else. Students learn to hear an author’s voice with Beatrix Potter’s calm Peter Rabbit, then borrow Rudyard Kipling’s playful voice, turning a flat, boring passage into writing that sounds just like him. It is reading like a writer, and it is the kind of thinking your strongest readers are hungry for.

Let’s take a starting phrase about St. Patrick’s Day and get specific. No, even more specific!

How many different ways can we use the word “fruit”? Let’s find out in this Parts of Speech Party!

Let’s make this simile about a strong uncle even more specific.

Start with a basic simile. Now make it more specific. Now even more. Watch how much better writing gets with each round.

Let’s make this simile about a quick baby even more specific.

Let’s make this simile about a loud class super specific!

Start with a basic simile. Now make it more specific. Now even more. Watch how much better writing gets with each round.

Pi can go beyond circles! What if you wrote using the digits of pi as your guide?

Get your students writing some pretty darn impressive poetry based on Japan’s most famous artist.

Let’s start with “As cold as fire.”

What if we started a sentence with the simile?

Have students mastered the art of anadiplosis: ending one sentence with the beginning of the next? Now it’s time to take it to the next level!

Repeating words can be what you want, if what you want is an interesting effect. (Psst, that’s an example of anadiplosis!)

A specific technique to help students add some spice to their writing. We’ll be writing sentences with three dependent clauses.

A specific technique to help students add some spice to their writing. We’ll be using antonyms to describe the same topic!

Students use 12 random phrases to create a story that takes place at the zoo.

Students use 12 random phrases to write a story that takes place in at an amusement park.

Is your students’ use of repetition limited to, “The girl was very, very, very fast.”? Let’s borrow some ideas from Shakespeare!

When students learn about alliteration, it’s hard to steer them away from goofy tongue-twisters. Certainly, there must be more powerful and practical ways of using alliteration. In this lesson, I draw on delicious examples from Shakespeare to show how a very advanced writer used alliteration. Then, I break those ideas down so students can try them out.

We’ll show students how to add more variety to their writing by starting sentences with a reason, a prepositional phrase, and a simile.

‘Add more variety!’ teachers say. But how? This lesson gives students actual techniques instead of vague advice.

We’ll start with the cliché “as cold as ice” and go somewhere much more interesting.