5th - 8th Grade Common Core Writing Organization Lesson Plans

Use this lesson to help your ELs understand how to cite their answers based on inferences they make about a text. It can be a stand-alone lesson or used as support to the lesson Colorful Coding.

Help students learn how to read passages with multiple main ideas and differentiate between main ideas and supporting details by creating a graphic organizer with proof from the text.

Support your EL students in understanding and identifying the main idea and supporting details in a nonfiction text. This can support the lesson Tip of the Iceberg: Nonfiction Summary Details.

Help your students' favorite characters come to life in new adventures as student writers draft new endings to their favorite stories.

Students will have the opportunity to fine-tune their writing by adding, deleting, or reworking content in their informational essay drafts. They’ll use a checklist to guide this critical step in the writing process.

Students will continue their informational writing project by creating an essay outline prior to drafting.

The hardest part of writing an essay can be the first few steps. This lesson and accompanying graphic organizers will help students map out their ideas and practice crafting paragraphs. With this support, your writers will be off and running!

Students will continue their informational writing project by organizing the information they gathered through research. They will use a graphic organizer to organize their ideas and sort their research notes into meaningful sections.

Step into the shoes of an explorer. Students will learn more about the lives and accomplishments of important explorers, and they'll demonstrate their knowledge through a creative writing assignment.

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz was a 17th century writer and philosopher who today is considered one of the first documented feminists and advocates for women’s education. In this lesson, students will read two nonfiction texts about Sor Juana and discuss her life and accomplishments before writing an opinion piece about her.

The energizer bunny went to jail. He was charged with battery. Get it? Your students will understand after this lesson! Use this lesson to give your students tools to understand and create Easter puns.

Knowing how to write an effective persuasive letter is a powerful tool. Students will learn how to advocate for their ideas by planning and drafting a well-supported persuasive letter on an issue of their choice.

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.

Hone your students' close reading skills by using this interesting and fun lesson that teaches your class survival skills in an informational text.

Help your students become shining stars with this lesson about metaphors. Your class will hone art skills and practice comparison using figurative language.

Similes, metaphors, and idioms are some of the most widely used literary devices in both speaking and writing. Students will review each of these and practice creating some of their own.

Use this lesson to help your ELs understand main idea and supporting details in the context of sentences and paragraphs. It can be a stand-alone lesson or a support lesson to the Power Reading lesson.

Use this lesson to help your ELs identify and discuss the author's point and the information that supports it. It can be a stand-alone lesson or used as support for the What’s the Point? lesson.

Once your students have drafted a persuasive letter, use this lesson to help them polish their writing. Students will use a checklist to ensure that all of the most important parts of their letter are included and the argument is solid.

Once students have selected a topic related to a piece of literature they have read and mapped out their argument, this lesson will help them turn their prewriting into an essay.

Help your ELs learn how to identify the main idea and supporting details in a nonfiction text by using nouns and pronouns as guide words. It can be a stand-alone lesson or used as support to the lesson Explorer Letters.

Up, up, and away! It's Peter Pan vs. Wendy vs. John in this reading comprehension lesson. Using the Peter Pan and Neverland workbook, students will use text excerpts and comprehension questions to write an essay comparing main characters.

This lesson will help students map out their argument essay after they have identified a topic. Students will learn the three basic components of constructing an argument: stating a claim, listing reasons, and providing evidence.

Help your students explain how an author uses reasons and evidence to support particular points in a text by giving them high-interest nonfiction texts to read.

Use this fun and easy lesson plan to teach your students to predict and calculate dimensions for shapes to scale in sets.

Bram Stoker's Dracula has inspired feelings of fear and morbid curiosity for over a century. With this lesson plan, your students will get a taste of the literary work while learning about the myth behind vampires.