These lessons compare different versions of the fairy tale, Little Red Riding Hood, giving students an opportunity to talk about the similiarities and differences among the different stories.  Students are then introduced to non-fiction text about wolves to determine different perscpectives of the wolf as a villian in the stories.

This mini unit walks students through the question/discovery process of nonfiction literature.  The first lesson encourages students to wonder while reading.  Then students research to find the answers to their questions.  They explore ways to show/write their new learning.  As a class the kids work to publish 1 or 2 classroom books on the research topic.  This is a great way to introduce the nonfiction unit and then let each student write thier own question book based on the process they used with the class book.

In order to fully comprehend reading materials, students need to understand the cause-and-effect relationships that appear in a variety of fiction and nonfiction texts. In this lesson, students learn cause-and-effect relationships through the sharing of a variety of Laura Joffe Numeroff picture books in a Reader's Workshop format. Using online tools or a printed template, students create an original comic strip via the writing prompt, "If you take a (third) grader to."  Students use various kinds of art to illustrate their strip and publish and present their completed piece to peers in a read-aloud format.

This is a quick overview for teachers of the Units of Study for Writing structure (K-8). There is also reference to upcoming professional development surrounding the Units of Study for Writing. This was used for a 20 minute staff meeting presentation prior to implementing the Units of Study for Writing.

A teacher uses multiple types of formative assessment practices within writing lessons including:
-Teacher observation of student discussion (“turn and talk”)
-Questioning (why?)
-Peer assessment

CESA #1 EL OER Project

Many ELLs have trouble formulating questions in English. This activity introduces story elements with a focus on asking questions to organize before writing a fiction piece.

This five- part writing lesson is aimed at the middle elementary grades. After a read- aloud, students guess why the authors chose to represent each letter with a particular word and then summarize the pattern of the book. Students use the pattern to create their own class alphabet book.

In this lesson, the teacher demonstrates how to use a learning progression to assess a piece of writing and then asks the students to apply the progression to their own writing to make revisions.  The students have been writing informational texts to teach others about a topic.

This lesson builds on students understanding of how to edit their writing so others will be able to read it. Students will learn how to edit writng by looking at grammar, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation.