Notice, Wonder: Fountain

A mysterious image. Reveal it slowly. Let your students wonder!

Notice, Wonder: Dazzle

A mysterious image. Reveal it slowly. Let your students wonder!

Improving Shakespeare’s Repetition

Let’s help William Shakespeare with his use of repetition.

Super Specific Similes – Slimy Broccoli

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

Think Like An Author: Hemingway vs Dickens

What if your students rewrote Dickens in the style of Hemingway and vice versa?

Idiom Tasks

Four fantastically terrific tasks for a weekly idiom study.

Notice, Wonder: Silver Torch

A mysterious image. Reveal it slowly. Let your students wonder!

Lipogram: Rewrite “Mary Had A Little Lamb”

What if we rewrote a piece of writing without using certain letters?

Lipogram: Rewrite “Twinkle, Twinkle”

What if we rewrote a piece of writing without using certain letters?

Holiday Writing: Packing Crates

An old photograph. A holiday scene. Pick one object in the picture and write from its point of view.

Back to School: Rewriting The Beatles’ “Help!”

Can your students come up with a one-syllable word to sum up their time away from school? And then rewrite The Beatles’ song Help!?

Writing About Art: Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons

Look closely at Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons. What do you notice? Now turn those details into a poem you didn’t know you could write.

Notice, Wonder: Bloom

A mysterious image. Reveal it slowly. Let your students wonder!

Five Sets of Bird and Bug Idioms

Five sets of idioms related to birds (and bugs).

Writing About Art: Chōshi in Shimosha

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

Fancier Figurative Language: Use the Opposite

Let’s start with “As cold as fire.”

Writing About Art: The Scream

Your students will turn the iconic painting The Scream into a vivid, sensory poem.

Writing Technique: Triple Anadiplosis!

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!

Doubling Up Writing: Anadiplosis

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

Remixing A Holiday Poem

Let’s take a classic Christmas poem and remix it to work with another holiday!

Writing Seuss Style Poetry

Sure, Dr. Seuss wrote for young students, but can older students analyze his writing and learn to mimic his style? THEN, they can produce Seuss-style poetry about any topic: Ancient China, the electromagnetic spectrum, Pride and Prejudice, and (yes) fraction division!

Fancier Figurative Language: Advanced Repetition

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

Advanced Alliteration and Consonance

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.

Writing Sample: The Fall of the House of Usher

A passage from “The Fall of the House of Usher” to use as a mentor text, discussion starter, or writing prompt.

What’s In My Brain: Cute Baby vs Fast Cheetah

Can students spot similes vs metaphors?

Identifying Author’s Voice

What if… Edgar Allen Poe wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland?

Studying and Remixing “The Raven”

Ready to push kids beyond the boring, old ABAB rhyme scheme and into something a bit more complex?

Literary Technique: Juxtaposition

Put a grumpy character next to a joyful one and they make each other stand out even more. Opposites are powerful!