Students utilize their reading and writing skills as they think critically in order to sort books in multiple ways.

Students create math stories by first drawing, then writing, and finally using math symbols to show addition or subtraction.

Students respond to a book they have read by thinking symbolically to create a business card for one of the characters.

Students identify the elements of fiction in a book they have read and share summaries of them by writing and illustrating their own mini-book.

Students work in groups to create annotated book reviews with links to topics of interest related to their book.

Students work together to create classroom rules by brainstorming why they are at school and what they need while they are there.

Students make bookmarks on computers and share their ideas with other readers at their school, while practicing summarizing, recognizing symbols, and writing reviews—all for an authentic audience.

Students create their own monster trading cards using "powerful," vivid language to describe their creatures.

Students analyze "choose your own adventure" stories and brainstorm to develop setting, characters, and plots for their own adventures stories and related Websites.

Students play a guessing game to practice using descriptive language.

Students celebrate a novel they have read and get hands-on experience with technical writing by creating a board game based on the novel and writing the instructions for it.

This minilesson guides student in using the PQP technique—Praise–Question–Polish—to offer concrete and useful peer review feedback.

Students often question whether a punctuation mark goes inside or outside the quotation marks, especially when writing dialogue. This lesson helps students identify the conventions and apply them to their text.

Students learn about paragraphing conventions in dialogue by revising their own writing.

Students use a graphic organizer to analyze setting development in picture books. They then apply what they have learned to their own writing.

Boom! Br-r-ring! Cluck! Moo!—Everywhere you turn, you find exciting sounds. Students use these sounds to write their own poems based on Dr. Seuss's Mr. Brown Can MOO! Can You?

Students explore character development through experiences with picture books. They learn about the connections between reading and writing and apply the information they learn to revisions of their own writing.

This lesson engages children in using writing to their families as a persuasive tool to get what they want and need.

Students explore letter poems and experiment with writing letters as poems, using the placement of line breaks to enhance rhythm, sound, meaning, and appearance.