Life Lessons

Included with the worksheets,these Word documents also include a "typical" sappy sonnet that employs Petrarchan conceits ("My love's hair is beaten gold," etc). I have students read that poem and illustrate what the woman in the poem would literally look like. We discuss how unrealistic the image is and how it compares to how Shakepeare portrays his woman.

Students will write five pretend entries that include pretend in text (parenthetical) citation from different sources and then create a fake works cited for their pretend research. Kids really get into this AND LEARN MLA citation!

SAVE YOURSELF TIME GRADING ESSAYS! This easy-to-follow document gives you and your students abbreviations for common middle and high school student essay errors. Instead of writing novels on your students' essays, simply give them this sheet of abbreviations and what they mean. Then all you do is write the error abbreviation on the paper and that's it. Then you might have time to write the novel you actually want to write!

This is one page activity. Students read a variety of fun clichés on different topics. They must then write nine of their own on other provided topics (man, cats, air). Last, they must choose three of the clichés to define. Thanks for looking!