Playlist: Bookmarks
Author’s Voice: Jack London
Every great author sounds like no one else. Students learn to hear an author’s voice with Charles Dickens’s dramatic A Christmas Carol, then borrow Jack London’s rugged 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.
Tournament of Mythological Creatures
Who will win the tournament of mythological creatures!?
Tournament of Not-So-Famous Inventors
Which inventor and invention will win the tournament?
Comparing Characters’ Bedrooms
What item’s in a character’s bedroom would reflect their deepest desires? And what if they toured a similar character’s room?
Natural Disasters Tournament
Earthquake vs. hurricane. Tsunami vs. wildfire. Students set the criteria, argue their case, and crown a champion. Warning: it gets heated.
Parts of Speech Party: Introduction (Check)
How many ways can we use “check” in a paragraph? And can your students spot when it’s a verb, or a noun, or an adjective?
Robot Writing: The Bridge
One painting of a bridge. Three robots. Who wrote it best?
Think Like An Author: Hemingway vs Dickens
What if your students rewrote Dickens in the style of Hemingway and vice versa?
Random Emoji Prompt Generator
Click up an interesting, visual writing prompt suitable for any grade or purpose.
Notice, Wonder: Ramses
A mysterious image. Reveal it slowly. Let your students wonder!
Tournament: 8 Wonders of the Solar System
Which location is the most wondrous place in the solar system?
Writing Technique: Contrast With Synonyms
A specific technique to help students add some spice to their writing. We’ll be contrasting two ideas using synonyms.
Story Starter: Out To Eat
Students pick from 12 random phrases to create a story about an incident in a restaurant.
Ghost
Ghost is a word-building game for two players. The first person to create an actual word loses.
Sprouts
Learn how to play the abstract, paper-and-pencil game Sprouts.
Describing Author’s Voice
What if… Edgar Allen Poe wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland?
Passive to Active Voice
In this lesson, students will not just fix passive sentences, but break active sentences as they learn to put the star of the sentence first.
Showing A Character’s Trait
We tell students to ‘show, not tell’ — but that advice is useless until they experience the difference. This lesson makes it click.
Studying and Remixing “The Raven”
Ready to push kids beyond the boring, old ABAB rhyme scheme and into something a bit more complex?
Educational Valentines
Let’s make valentines with an educational twist!
Create A Creature
Create a new creature based on the adaptations of existing creatures from the same biome.
Ways to Start a Sentence – Level 1
‘Add more variety!’ teachers say. But how? This lesson gives students actual techniques instead of vague advice.
Better Stories Part 2: Types of Conflict
If your students’ stories are packed with endless ninja fights or arguments between frenemies, it’s time to expose them to a wider range of conflicts.