The Writing Teacher's Activity-a-Day: 180 Reproducible Prompts and Quick-Writes for the Secondary Classroom

By Mary Ellen Ledbetter

Classroom-tested methods for boosting secondary students' writing skills

The Writing Teacher's Activity-a-Day offers teachers, homeschoolers, and parents 180 ready-to-use, reproducible activities that enhance writing skills in secondary students. Based on Ledbetter's extensive experience consulting to language arts teachers and school districts across the country, the classroom-tested activities included in this book teach students key literary and writing terms like allegory, elaboration, irony, personification, propaganda, voice, and more--and provide them with engaging examples that serve as models for their own Quick Writes.

• Contains writing prompts and sample passages in student-friendly language that connects abstract literary concepts to students' own lives
• Written by popular workshop presenter and veteran educator Mary Ellen Ledbetter
• Offers a user-friendly, value-packed resource for teaching writing skills

Designed for English language arts teachers in grades 6-12, tutors, parents, learning specialists, homeschoolers, and consultants.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiley
• Release date: Dec 4, 2009
• ISBN: 9780470559468

Book preview

Action Verbs as a Method of Elaboration

Action verbs are methods of elaboration, ways to help writers make a point in their writing.

EXAMPLE:

Mama taught me how to be a lady. One of her most important rules was not to pick at myself or my clothing, at least in public. When I was a child, if any part of me itched, ached, burned, or generally felt the need to be scratched, rubbed, blown on, or tickled, I learned to shift my weight ever so nonchalantly as I sat or to recross my legs—at the ankles, like a lady—or to perform any number of secret maneuvers to relieve these untimely annoyances.

002

NOTE: The author has used dashes, which are considered a sophisticated form of punctuation; these are used as a type of parenthetical insertion, an interrupter.

003

ACTIVITIES

1. Begin your writing with a topic sentence, as in the example. Use at least five action verbs to make your point.

2. After five minutes, pass your writing to a neighbor, who will underline your action verbs and check to determine whether they were used as support for your topic sentence.

Adages

An adage is a saying expressing a common experience or observation that can be used as an allusion or reference to make a point in writing. To let the reader know that the author is aware of the familiar usage, a phrase such as "as the adage goes ..." acknowledges this to the reader.

EXAMPLES:

A watched pot never boils.

No man is an island.

Beggars can’t be choosers.

One rotten apple spoils the barrel.

Cold hands, warm heart.

Practice makes perfect.

Don’t cry over spilt milk.

Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Easy come, easy go.

Slow but steady wins the race.

Finders keepers, losers weepers.

Too many cooks spoil the broth.

Good fences make good neighbors.

Variety is the spice of life.

Haste makes waste.

When it rains, it pours.

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try

again.

You can lead a horse to water, but

you can’t make him drink.

Knowledge is power.

Little pitchers have big