Clues to Walt Whitman's effort to create a new and distinctly American form of verse may be found in his Notebooks, now available online from the American Memory Collection.  In an entry to be examined in this lesson, Whitman indicated that he wanted his poetry to explore important ideas of a universal scope (as in the European tradition), but in authentic American situations and settings using specific details with direct appeal to the senses.

In this lesson, students explore the historical context of  Walt Whitman's concept of "democratic poetry" by reading  his poetry and prose and by examining daguerreotypes taken circa 1850.  Next, students will compare the poetic concepts and techniques behind Whitman's "I Hear America Singing" and Langston Hughes' "Let America Be America Again," and have an opportunity to apply similar concepts and techniques in creating a poem from their own experience.

This resource was created by Jill Anderson, in collaboration with Dawn DeTurk, Hannah Blomstedt, and Julie Albrecht, as part of ESU2's Integrating the Arts project. This project is a four year initiative focused on integrating arts into the core curriculum through teacher education, practice, and coaching.

The outcomes for this module include: outline some of the key skills needed for effective teamwork; consider how effective the communication skills have been in teams you have been part of; explain four models of decision making; understand how to give feedback effectively.

This nonfiction article, written for students in grades 4-5, explores blue whales, their food chain, and their home in the Southern Ocean. Modified versions are available for students in younger grades.

 The attached Remote Lesson Plan is designed for Grade 7 English Language Arts students. Students will get an introduction to genre and the different characteristics of genre. They will gain information through a slide show and a video. Digital flashcards are provided to help with learning the terms and their definitions. A Check for Understanding is provided to assess how each student is understanding the characteristics of a variety of literary and informational. This Remote Lesson Plan addresses the following NDE Standard: NE LA 7.1.6.gIt is expected that this Remote Learning Plan will take students 90 minutes to complete.

This nonfiction article, written for students in grades 4-5, explores the life of the arctic wolf. Modified versions are available for students in younger grades.

Do you need to teach -dge? I, personally, could never find any good resources on teaching this tricky, yet necessary, phonics trigraph. This lesson should take approximately 2-3 sessions. The design is compatible with small group, Station Rotation, or whole class instruction. I've tried to provide enough options to make this lesson adaptable to a blended learning setting, so you can do it F2F or digitally.

Oral poetry--rapper poet Prince Ea talks about the pain and division in our world and that the answer is love. Great journal prompt to get kids thinking about social justice, problems in the world they would like to address, or reflective writing about their own struggles.

Why Writing Works: Disciplinary Approaches to Composing Texts is an open-access, online textbook resource for college writing. It is written for an audience of second-year college students with a focus on writing in the disciplines.

Learn about how wild parakeets have adapted to city life in this WILD TV video segment.

An instructor resource to accompany The Word on College Reading and Writing, which is an open educational resource (OER) for developing college readers and writers.

Explore the traditions and conventions of haiku and compare this classic form of Japanese poetry to a related genre of Japanese visual art.

Writing Commons aspires to be a community for writers, a creative learning space for students in courses that require college-level writing, a creative, interactive space for teachers to share resources and pedagogy. Our primary goal is to provide the resources and community students need to improve their writing, particularly students enrolled in courses that require college-level writing. As mentioned in 'About Us', we believe learning materials should be free for all students and teachers‰ part of the cultural commons. Hence, we provide free access to an award-winning, college textbook that was published by a major publisher and awarded the Distinguished Book Award by Computers and Composition: an International Journal.

Writing Guide with Handbook aligns to the goals, topics, and objectives of many first-year writing and composition courses. It is organized according to relevant genres, and focuses on the writing process, effective writing practices or strategies—including graphic organizers, writing frames, and word banks to support visual learning—and conventions of usage and style. The text includes an editing and documentation handbook, which provides information on grammar and mechanics, common usage errors, and citation styles.

Writing Guide with Handbook breaks down barriers in the field of composition by offering an inviting and inclusive approach to students of all intersectional identities. To meet this goal, the text creates a reciprocal relationship between everyday rhetoric and the evolving world of academia. Writing Guide with Handbook builds on students’ life experiences and their participation in rhetorical communities within the familiar contexts of personal interaction and social media. The text seeks to extend these existing skills by showing students how to construct a variety of compelling compositions in a variety of formats, situations, and contexts.

Have you ever received a writing assignment, thought “this won’t take long” and then stayed up all night writing the night before your assignment was due because it ended up taking a lot longer than you thought it would? If you have, you’re not alone. Many beginning writers struggle to plan well when it comes to a writing assignment, and this results in writing that is just not as good as it could be. When you wait until the last minute and fail to engage in a good writing process, you’re not doing your best work—even if you did “get all A’s in high school” as a procrastinator. In this step-by-step support area, you will find everything you need to know about writing a paper from start to finish.

MIT students are challenged daily to solve for x, to complete four problem sets, two papers, and prepare for an exam worth 30% of their grade… all in one night. When they do stop to breathe, it’s for a shower or a meal. What does this have to do with creative writing? Everything. Creative writing and MIT go together better than you might imagine.

This course takes rhetoric as a system for designing meaning that helps us understand complex situations and ideas, enlighten and persuade others to act, and thus reshape our world. We’ll study rhetoric systematically and empirically, both analyzing how it works on us as readers, and testing how we can make informed rhetorical choices as we design our own texts.