Over a flexible series of activities, students will learn to draw details from real life to create unforgettable characters and compelling stories.

A student’s guide for evaluating evidence and learning to spot misleading and false information.

Inspired by George Ella Lyon’s original poem, this lesson guides students through naming the people, places, and things that have shaped them.

Students will collect dirt, map their neighborhood, and listen to music that explores low sound, depth of soil, and the psychological landscape of New Orleans.

Emotions play a big role in how we remember places important to us. Students explore this notion by writing memoirs, using plot, dialogue, and description to bring their stories to life.

Students will learn to see home in a fresh way, to walk through doors and open windows they never noticed, and to find the stories that home holds.

This lesson from College Essay Guy introduces students to two types of effective college essay structures: Montage and Narrative.

In this lesson, students explore the graphic novel genre with a focus on plot and character development, scripting dialogue, and visual composition.

Invite students to write about their personal experiences with social media and online platforms with this lesson from 826NYC.

This lesson supports college-bound students in writing compelling personal statements. Students will go from blank page to finished draft as they brainstorm, develop, and analyze personal statements.

Students examine relationships between art, poetry, politics, and current events, and reflect on personal experiences while writing social justice poetry.

By examining patterns in engaging published stories and applying a set of meaningful prompts, students will learn how to develop well-rounded characters that readers really care about.

Few expressions of gratitude are more meaningful than a personalized letter. In this lesson, students reach out to essential workers and return their acts of service and kindness by giving thanks.

Through discussion, map-making, and writing, students will investigate the ways in which our knowledge of places is constructed and will uncover the ways that this knowledge is distorted by biases.

Students (virtually) explore a local cemetery and write a monologue from a famous person buried there, including facts from their research and imagined details from a mapping exercise.

In this lesson, students have an opportunity to write a letter expressing their views on issues that matter to them most surrounding an election.

Students will tell stories about their neighborhoods and create maps that document change. The end result is a better understanding of a map’s ability to demonstrate the history behind fixed points.

Students become script detectives in this lesson, searching for the underlying structure of every play. Student then draw from memories to inspire original plays.

Students will identify something they have inherited from their families, conduct interviews, and write a narrative essay. This lesson is especially well suited for English Language Learners.

The COVID-19 pandemic changed our lives. This lesson will support students in processing the changes in their everyday lives and help them to identify the creativity their community has exhibited.

Through writing, drawing, mapping, and researching a chosen fruit, students will become more familiar with the often complex history of food and how people access it.

Students enter The Poetry Laboratory, no lab coats required, and use methods of observation and playful strategies to embark on the process of writing poetry.

In this Lesson, students will further their understanding of how language can impact identity through the process of naming.

In this lesson, students are challenged to reevaluate the way water and land are represented on a map.

What happens when we start from a place of gratitude? In this lesson, students will use Ross Gay’s "Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude" as a catalyst for a daily gratitude journal.

In this lesson, students explore the genres of historical and speculative fiction before they reimagine a time they felt powerless and write a different outcome.

Over the course of this lesson, students produce memoirs, poems, and essays that explore what it means to be a member of the LGBTQIA community in America today.

By examining patterns in engaging published stories and applying a set of meaningful prompts, students will learn how to develop well-rounded characters that readers really care about.

Students will work in a collaborative, constructive setting to create a vision for your classroom as a safe space for students and teachers.

In this lesson by a young adult author and self-confessed superfan Lisa Lutz, students will learn letter-writing tips and create a fan letter.

Students will work together to produce a newspaper for the fictional Flood City. In the process, they will take on the roles of editor and journalist to source, draft, and present their newspaper.

In this Lesson, students will learn how to write comedy sketches inspired by "Monty Python’s Flying Circus."

This lesson invites students to write a modern day fairy tale. Students will reconstruct classic fairy tales by choosing to focus on altering one story element: setting, point of view, or resolution.

The pen is mightier than the sword. In this lesson, students learn there's no better evidence of this than the poetry behind social movements.