Students become word artists as they use ordinary pictures to practice creating detailed descriptions. This technique helps your class learn how to paint a picture with words.

Help your students learn how to move smoothly between ideas and paragraphs using transition words and phrases. Young writers will use real texts as mentors as they study how authors use words to transition between ideas and support their claims. As a result, they will have a word bank to use in their own writing.

Every great reader and writer knows that syntax matters. During this lesson, students will use the close reading strategy to focus on word choice, and use their understanding of syntax to develop theories about patterns in the text.

Students will get lots of editing practice in this lesson! After reviewing basic editing symbols, students will edit provided stories and a partner’s work. Student will also learn about editing tools used in word processing.

Use this lesson to help your ELs understand main idea and supporting details. They'll analyze non-fiction word, sentence, and paragraph structures. It can be a stand-alone lesson or a support lesson to the In Search of Main Ideas lesson.