Unit 4: Informational Writing
Welcome to our fourth writing unit of the school year. Below you will find a detailed description of each element, as well as ways to put them together to make your own custom unit. To learn more, visit our writing curriculum overview.Unit overviewOf the three broad types of writing that the Common Core State Standards…
Writing Comparative Essays: Making Connections to Illuminate Ideas
Notice how this student focuses. Instead of starting with a broad thesis like “We can see many parallels between the themes of ‘The Odyssey’ and our world today,” he looks only at how the Greek concept of xenia echoes today — and does so by examining just one article about Uganda. Below are the first…
Try This: 16 Real-World Models for DIY Writing Projects
If teachers need a model for inexpensive, authentic and game-changing writing instruction, they should look no further than the big box Swedish household goods and furniture company Ikea. Ingvar Kamprad, the company’s founder, created a brilliant formula: Take your average homeowners, invite them into a vast and winding labyrinth of well-designed and appointed model rooms,…
Unit 1: Teach Narrative Writing With The New York Times
Welcome to our first writing unit of the school year. Below you’ll find a detailed description of each element, as well as ways to put them together to make your own custom writing unit. To learn more about other writing units, visit our writing curriculum overview. Stories can thrill, wound, delight, uplift and teach. Telling…
181 Prompts to Inspire Writing and Discussion
Every day of the school year, we publish a fresh Student Opinion question. Below are all the 181 questions we asked during the 2018-19 school year (available here as a PDF), divided into two categories — those that easily lend themselves to classroom debate and persuasive writing, and those that are more suitable for creative,…
Over 140 Picture Prompts to Inspire Student Writing
Think The New York Times is only for readers at a high-school reading level? Think again. Besides written articles, The Times also offers a rich collection of visuals — photos, illustrations, graphics, GIFs and short videos — that are accessible to learners of all levels. Since 2016, we’ve been featuring these images in our daily…
Learning With: ‘From Clay Tablets to Smartphones: 5,000 Years of Writing’
6. The author writes: The slow abatement of handwriting today feels like the severing of a historical tie. It relates us to the Mesopotamians, to Chaucer, to that struggling Egyptian student. Finland, for instance, has dropped its handwriting requirements in schools in favor of typing lessons. In the United States, in 2010, Common Core standards…
