Fran57

"Broken Chain" and "Oranges" by Gary Soto are great stories to compare! "Broken Chain" is a short narrative story and "Oranges" is a poem. Both are regarding dating and middle-school aged boys. The first task is to summarize. There are a couple of strong comparison questions requiring students to cite examples from the text. This involves students identifying similes and providing meaning for one of them. Additionally, students must figure out words in context and make strong supported infer

More than a place to record books and minutes read, this weekly worksheet provides a place for effective goal-setting, reflection, and thoughtful writing about reading based on a host of teacher-created questions. This form of reading journal helps prevent students from writing about something they didn't read. Coupled with a 4-point rubric that is quick and easy to use, this is a time-tested winner! If you find this helpful, please let me know. I'd really appreciate a rating or a follow.

Use this short assignment to review the most difficult part of writing a paragraph, concluding sentences! I find this very effective in helping my 7th graders. I hope it works for you as well!

This excellent source for middle school narrative writing provides students the one thing they crave and desire more than anything else when writing - choice! It includes three well-developed narrative writing prompts. Each prompt allows students to write personal, biographical, or fictional narrative stories. It includes a proven graphic organizer that helps students develop character and plot and a revision checklist that aligns with the common core rubric.

Using the story Rikki Tikki Tavi by Rudyard Kipling, students work on character trait identification citing specific evidence from the text, writing a summary using a provided graphic organizer, and finding and identifying appositives in the text. All include four-point rubrics are included. The story itself is readily available other places, but is not included in this assignment due to copyright.

This book project is a basic, but effective, book project that helps students practice finding specific evidence to support a theme of a book read by students. I have used this before, but added a section for revision, as my students need more practice with this. This project does not teach theme. It does, however, help students to practice its implementation.

This graphic organizer helps students set up the difficult task of compare and contrasting two different pieces of writing. A quality rubric is included.

This organizer helps students to analyze theme and character emotions in a way that drives plot. When using this as a guide for writing fiction, my students create much stronger plot with deeper and richer details. The best part is that it can be used with any sort of narrative!

This is a place for students to chart the different genres of books they read.

This is a page for students to record the books they'd like to read. It is especially helpful when we give book talks to have it out. Without this page, I found my students would be excited about books that their peers read, but would never remember the names of the books. It is also useful when we are in the library checking out books! If you find this helpful, please let me know. I'd really appreciate a rating or a follow.