Make the most of your students' diverse ability levels and experience with a prewriting activity in which they describe an abstract idea using blogging and photographs that they have taken.

Students hone their teamwork skills and play off each other's writing strengths as they participate in prewriting activities for a story to be written collaboratively by the whole class.

Students use their five senses as a prewriting tool to guide their poetry writing as they compose free-form poems using imagery to describe a color.

This mini lesson on prewriting strategies for 5th-8th graders is designed to help students generate ideas for a personal narrative essay in which the writer tells a story about a real-life experience.  Prewriting is particularly important because it helps the student plan how to start the narrative essay and to think about the details to include.  The four strategies covered in this lesson (using sentence starters, freewriting, listing, and mind mapping) can help writers select which personal experiences have the most significance for them.  If the writer feels a strong connection to their topic, then it will be easier for them to convey a message and write an effective narrative essay.Sentence starters is a technique to help students understand the need to focus on a personal experience and can help them frame the initial sentences of their essay.  Freewriting helps writers get started without overthinking, which can cause more anxiety and sometimes leads to writer's block.  Freewriting helps students write continuously for a set period of time in order to get initial thoughts on paper. Listing and mind mapping are brainstorming techniques which are both helpful in generating essay topics, themes, and supporting details.Throughout the lesson, students can practice each technique, so that by the end of the lesson they can begin writing the first paragraph of their personal narrative essay.

This is a mirco-lecture on audience preceding a pre-writing activity to help students think more deeply about their potential audiences when writing a position argument.

This Learning Plan was created by Tessie Boudreau as part of the 2020 NDE OER Project. The attached Remote Learning Plan is designed for Grade 6 English Language Arts students. Students will set up and use a writer's notebook in prewriting activities. This Remote Learning Plan addresses the following NDE Standard: NE LA It is expected that this Learning Plan will take students 60-90 minutes to complete.  

After reading "The Very Hungry Caterpillar", by Eric Carle students will use the writing process to write their own version of a Very Hungry story. They will use a flow map for pre-writing. Students will write a rough draft that will be revised and edited with a partner and a teacher.