Words Within Words: PATRICK

How many words can you find within Patrick?

Words Within Words: ORNAMENT

How many words can you find within ORNAMENT?

Words Within Words: STUFFING

How many words are hiding inside STUFFING? More than you think.

Shift Cipher (Codes Part 1)

Let’s encode and decode secret messages like Julius Caesar!

Word Pyramid: M to CAMPUS

Add a letter at each step to form a new word. Can you connect the starting point and ending point?

Word Pyramid: P to PLAINS

Add a letter at each step to form a new word. Can you connect the starting point and ending point?

Word Pyramid: T to Patch

Add a letter at each step to form a new word. Can you connect the starting point and ending point?

Word Pyramid: H to CRASH

Add a letter at each step to form a new word. Can you connect the starting point and ending point?

Fixing Shakespearean Run-Ons

Can your students help The Bard? We’ll fix five Shakespearean run-ons in three different ways.

Writing Sample: A Christmas Carol (Cold)

A passage from White Fang to use as a mentor text, discussion starter, or writing prompt.

Story Starter: A Day At School

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

Story Starter: A Magical School

Students use 12 random phrases to create a story that takes place in at a magical school.

Punctuation Power

In a sentence, punctuation may seem meek when compared to those mighty words, but punctuation has incredible power over the meaning of a sentence. Students will try re-punctuating sentences to find new meanings – without changing a single word!

Plurals: An Inductive Spelling Lesson

Plural nouns in English are deliciously fascinating. Yet most plural lessons are so dull! In this experience, students are given a pile of plurals and then inductively create groups and pull out rules and patterns.

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.

Run On or Not? – What’s In My Brain

Can your students spot the run-on sentences?

“Its Big Day” – A Children’s Story About Its and It’s

Let’s spice up a typically dull lesson about the difference between “its” and “it’s” by asking students to write a children’s story about the adventures of a critter named It.