ELA Extras

Teaching an argumentative unit? Planning to assign an argumentative essay? It all starts with helping students understand the building blocks of an argument: offer a claim, support it with reliable evidence, and explain or analyze that evidence. So why not have them start with looking at examples of those 3 tasks? KEY ELEMENTS:This resource provides students with sets of claims, evidence, and explanations. Their task will be to sort the 42 cards into the 3 categories. By the end, they will have

This one-pager project is a great way for students to show their understanding of figurative language while serving as a great study tool to review similes, metaphors, personification, alliteration, onomatopoeia, hyperbole, and imagery. For each literary device, they will have to provide an original definition, example, and representative picture. A scoring rubric is included! This can be a collaborative project or an individual assignment. It could even be your figurative language quiz to ass

This is a great activity for students to complete after reading the hilarious short story, "Priscilla and the Wimps" by Richard Peck. It requires them to apply their knowledge of figurative language as well as their close reading skills. A glossary of terms is provided for students to use as a reference. This can also be easily adapted into a digital worksheet.

Dialogue and quotation punctuation can be tough for students to remember. They use this type of punctuation when writing narratives as well as when using quotations in informative and argumentative essays. This worksheet can be used to introduce the dialogue punctuation rules, review the format after a lesson, or as assess to make sure students know how to properly punctuate dialogue and quotations! It is ready to download and print with two worksheets on each page so less paper is wasted! You

Whether you are teaching an argumentative, persuasive, or informative essay, you have to teach students how to write an introduction paragraph. Let this presentation do the teaching for you! It includes instructions and examples for how to write a hook, establish background information, and construct a thesis statement. It is easily adaptable into a PearDeck or NearPod, too, if you want students to interact digitally! Like this product? Need some more resources for essay writing season? Check

Five stations set up to practice the 5 nonfiction text structures: description, sequence, compare/contrast, cause and effect, and problem/solution. Each station provides specific directions and topic options that match the assigned text structure. Students have the option of working in a group or completing the stations individually. If you have access to 1:1 devices, you can also allow students to find some research to add to their paragraphs as they go through the stations. The station direc

This resource is a grammar review activity that consists of 4 different printable puzzles for students to complete. Each puzzle ends with students using specific letters to add to the final puzzle. Once they have all the letters, they can unscramble them to find the final word to "escape!" Puzzle 1 - matching sentences with the error they contain Puzzle 2 - grammar-related puns and riddles Puzzle 3 - multiple-choice questions where students have to choose the correction to fix each sentence Puz

This activity is great practice for students learning how to SHOW in their writing and not tell. The worksheet starts with asking them to rewrite simple sentences by focusing on choosing more powerful verbs and more precise adjectives. Then, they tackle the big challenge of rewriting a whole paragraph! This activity is easily adapted into a digital format for students to type their SHOWING paragraph and submit in an online classroom. This can be used to introduce the idea of SHOW NOT TELL or ass

Assess students' reading comprehension and analysis of Books 5, 9, 10, 11, and 12 of Homer's The Odyssey. Each study guide includes text-based questions with an answer key. These can be your reading guides or your assessments! Print them out or post them to your online classroom.

Who doesn't love a one pager? It is an excellent WICOR strategy, can be adapted for any literary text whether short story, novel excerpt, or full-length novel (fiction or nonfiction), and it allows students to demonstrate their understanding of a text in a creative way. It's the hip, updated, 21st century version of the book report. Students can use this resource to create a physical version of a one pager or a digital version on Google Docs or Jamboard. You can customize the directions to fit

Check out this great way to help students analyze texts to identify the tone an author uses and the mood a text can create based on the author's choices. This can be a great stations activity! Simply post the text excerpts around your classroom and students can travel between each excerpt analyzing the tone, mood, and defending their categorization choices. Each text excerpt comes from a great YA short story or novel--everything from Twilight to a Jordan Sonnenblick novel! The texts show a wid

Engage your students with this comprehensive and creative 14-slide Google Slides template designed for in-depth character analysis of Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet. Perfect for distance learning or classroom use, this ready-to-assign activity encourages students to go beyond surface-level understanding and analyze the motivations and complexities of key figures in the play. This resource includes analysis sections for three major characters: JulietRomeoFriar LaurenceFormat: ~14 fully editable sl

Unlock the mysteries of the criminal mind with this engaging TED Talk worksheet on the biology of serial killers and the nature vs. nurture debate. This comprehensive psychology and forensics resource is perfect for high school English or social studies classes looking to explore the environmental triggers of psychopathy or practice skills in analyzing, delineating, and evaluating an argument. Bring real-world science into your classroom! This ready-to-use lesson explores James Fallon’s "Three-L

Start off class all week long by practicing parallel structure skills with this great warm-up worksheet! This product takes students from basic recognition to high-level rhetorical application in just a few minutes each day. What’s Inside?This resource is designed to build confidence through a logical progression: Day 1: The Basics. Students learn to identify "Parallel (P)" vs. "Non-Parallel (NP)" structures and fix simple lists.Day 2: Pairs & Series. Focuses on the tricky stuff—like fixing mism

Reading Homer's famous epic, The Odyssey, with your class? Use this study guide as a way to assess reading comprehension, quiz them over their understanding of the text, or as a rigor literary analysis activity. This resource includes 3 different graphic novel versions of The Odyssey. Students can analyze and compare each version on their own devices while understanding the key events of Book 12 where Odysseus encounters the Sirens, Scylla, and Charybdis. There are 25 text-based questions in

Looking for a way to make vocabulary instruction "stick" without the usual eye-rolls? This POSSUM Vocabulary Graphic Organizer is a research-based, brain-friendly tool designed to help students dive deep into word morphology and meaning. Whether you’re tackling Tier 2 academic words or specific content-area terms, the POSSUM strategy forces students to move beyond simple memorization and into true word mastery. Developed by Dr. Maryanne Wolf, the Possum Strategy is based on understanding a word

Ready to see what your students understand about arguments? This quiz assesses their knowledge of six argumentative elements: claim, reason, evidence, counterclaim, rebuttal, and call to action. The first part includes matching between term and definition. The second half of the quiz asks students to identify the six argumentative elements in a text that you provide. If you have access to Scope magazine, each issue has a student-friendly argumentative text. Otherwise, you can access great argum

Help your students move beyond "cherry-picking" facts and toward genuine critical thinking. The Ripple Effect Research Organizer is designed to help students visualize how their understanding grows, shifts, and evolves as they encounter new perspectives and diverse media formats. Instead of just filling in boxes, students use this "ripple" framework to layer their knowledge, ensuring they don't just find information—they actually process it. How the Ripple WorksThis organizer guides students t

Do your students write an argumentative essay? You need to use this PearDeck that guides students through writing a claim, supporting it with reasoning, quoting/citing evidence, and analyzing and explaining it in a paragraph. This Google Slides presentation uses the PearDeck extension to allow students to respond to each prompt or question as they go through each slide. If you have never used PearDeck before, no fear! It's super easy and FREE. Just add it as an extension in Google Slides and cl

Reading Homer's famous epic, The Odyssey, with your class? Use this study guide as a way to assess reading comprehension, quiz them over their understanding of the text, or as a during-reading discussion guide. There are 15 text-based questions in this activity. Print this out for students to complete on paper or post it to your online classroom! Answer key included!