Students interview family members, and then create graphic family timelines based on important and memorable family events.
This series of activities is designed to teach research strategies. Students use KWL charts to guide their inquiry and publish their results in a collaborative question and answer book.
Students write authentic newspaper stories, including learning about various aspects of newspapers, such as writing an article, online articles, newspaper reading habits, and layout and design techniques.
This lesson teaches intermediate students to "use the experts" to learn how to revise to create sharp, sensory-rich experiences for their readers.
Students learn how to get their voice out on the web when they research issues important to them and compose a persuasive podcast to post online.
Students publish their work in an electronic portfolio, which enables them to respond to each other's content online.
After reading a short story, students use freewriting as a catalyst for a literary analysis essay.
Students are exposed to wordless picture books and begin developing story lines, both orally and in writing, using an online, interactive story map.
Students practice writing detailed, sensory-rich descriptions by framing a small piece of nature and freewriting about it. From this minilesson, students can develop a variety of types of writing.
Students take their ideas from the classroom page to the community pavement when they participate in a service-learning project based on their multimedia presentations.
By looking at advertising and mass media critically, students begin to understand how the media oppresses certain groups, convinces people to purchase certain products, and influences culture.
By critically analyzing popular television programs, students develop an awareness of the messages that are portrayed through the media.
Students make predictions about the stories and analyze story elements, compare and contrast the different stories, distinguish between fact and opinion, and draw conclusions supported by evidence from their readings.
This tool allows students to complete crossword puzzles on a variety of grade-appropriate topics, and also create and print their own crossword puzzles.
Students rework their forgotten/abandoned drafts by cutting and covering up selected words. By creatively manipulating text, they explore portal writing, a strategy for envisioning a new story or story direction.
Book Boosts: one-minute raves at the end of independent reading time: are easy ways to suggest new titles to students, and they act as a way for students to have something to think about as they read.
Students learn about personification by reading and discussing poems and then brainstorm nouns and verbs to create personification in their own poems.
This lesson introduces the concept of cause and effect with Trinka Hakes Noble's books about Jimmy and his boa constrictor. Each lesson begins with the teacher reading a new story about Jimmy and his boa and the chaos they bring to each place they visit. Class discussions about each event and its cause are followed by tasks for the students to help illustrate understanding of the concept. Students create cause-and-effect pictures, puzzles, and flow charts as they explore the genre. As a culminating activity, students write their own book with causes and effects, which are assessed with a rubric.
Students write persuasive letters to their librarian requesting that specific texts be added to the school library. As they work, students plan their arguments and outline their reasons and examples.
This lesson uses clips from "The Matrix" and other dystopian movies to introduce students to the characteristics found in dystopian works, such as "Brave New World", "Fahrenheit 451", and "1984".