Jennifer Roach

This graphic organizer helps students prepare to write an Analytical Expository Essay similar to the type of essay required on the ACT Aspire for 7th grade.

This presentation teaches students to write an analytical expository essay in an on-demand writing setting such as the ACT Aspire Writing Test.

Don't waste another minute looking up standards! This lesson plan template allows you to have all of your grade level common core standards (i.e. reading literature, reading information, writing, language, and speaking and listening) plus an entire nine weeks worth of your lesson plans on one spreadsheet. You can easily click a button without opening another document to see what you did last week or what you have coming up in the near future. The standards pages and template are already creat

This graphic organizer is aligned to the Common Core Standards for Argumentative Writing. It is useful for grades 6-12. With this graphic organizer, students will: state a claim and defend it with three reasons, support the reasons with data such as facts, statistics, and expert opinions, address the counterargument by writing a rebuttal of the opposing viewpoint, and write a conclusion. Students should be able to move straight from this graphic organizer to the rought draft.

Don't waste another minute looking up standards! This lesson plan template allows you to have all of your grade level common core standards (i.e. reading literature, reading information, writing, language, and speaking and listening) plus an entire nine weeks worth of your lesson plans on one spreadsheet. You can easily click a button without opening another document to see what you did last week or what you have coming up in the near future. The standards pages and template are already creat

Use this graphic organizer to help your students engage in guided reading with a purpose. The teacher provides exemplars of argumentative writing, and the students answer questions comparing the texts such as "what kind of evidence does the author include to support his claim?"

This graphic organizer / reading guide resembles the old toy "Etch a Sketch" and is a great way to reach different learning styles. The teacher can choose any two peices of literature to have students compare by both sketching a picture and writing a paragraph. (I use this with the novel Among the Hidden by Margaret Peterson Haddix and an excerpt from "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" to have students compare Luke's experience of hiding in an attic with that of Harriet Jacobs.)

This document contains a student version fill-in-the-blank handout as well as the teacher answer key for a mini-lesson on writing descriptively within narrative writing. This lesson can be used when teaching students to write personal narratives, memoirs, or narrative poetry.

After writing personal narratives or memoirs, students can use this from with either a partner or a small group to revise their work. The form challenges students to think in multiple domains of writing including content and development, organization, and voice. The form allows students to rate several criteria and then provide written feedback to the student writer.

This user-friendly checklist can be used as a rubric to grade Argumentative Essays and cuts your grading time in half! Students can earn up to 20 points, and there is a grade scale ranging from 45% (1/20) - 100% (20/20).

Students can use this graphic organizer when writing argumentatively to analyze the pros and cons of their topic.

This reading guide is for use with a thematic unit on "Tradition vs. Change" and is very useful in meeting the Common Core standards. Students can use this chart to tie together a variety of texts related to a common theme including the novel Among the Hidden by Margaret Peterson Haddix, the short story, "The Lottery," by Shirley Jackson, and the biography of Harriet Jacobs. There is also space to include two other texts such as poems or informational articles related to the theme. The chart

Verball Volleyball is a teaching strategy based on the AVID strategy called Philosophical Chairs. Students will meet all of the Common Core Speaking and Listening Standards while participating in this fun class discussion activity. This document is a handout for students to be used as a closing activity at the end of the discussion. The students will: reflect on their original opinion about the topic of discussion, answer questions about the flow of discussion, and evaluate whether or not their

Verball Volleyball is a teaching strategy based on the AVID strategy called Philosophical Chairs. Students will meet all of the Common Core Speaking and Listening Standards while participating in this fun class discussion activity. This document is a handout for students that explains the rules for engagement in Verbal Volleyball. The teacher can choose any statement to discuss that fits the current unit of study.

Students can use this graphic organizer to help them understand and compare a variety of narrative texts. The teacher provides exemplars of memoir or personal narrative writing, and the students read and respond to questions such as "what details does the author include that elaborate on each event in the plot?"

This rubric is based on the Common Core Standards for narrative writing and is for use with 3rd-8th grades.

Verball Volleyball is a teaching strategy based on the AVID strategy called Philosophical Chairs. Students will meet all of the Common Core Speaking and Listening Standards while participating in this fun class discussion activity. This document is a rubric that teachers can use to assess students during the discussion. The teacher can choose any statement to discuss that fits the current unit of study.

This charts allows students to compare three versions of the Cinderella story including "Turkey Girl" and "Yeh-Shen" by looking at the following criteria: plot, evidence of oral tradition, characters, magical elements, patterns, and theme.