Renee Goularte

Grades   K – 2  |  Lesson Plan  |  Unit

"America the Beautiful": Using Music and Art to Develop Vocabulary

Students engage in a rich study of vocabulary words from the song “America the Beautiful,” using music and art.

 

Grades   1 – 2  |  Lesson Plan  |  Standard Lesson

Acrostic Poems: All About Me and My Favorite Things

Students create acrostic poems using their names and the names of things that are important to them.

 

Grades   K – 2  |  Lesson Plan  |  Standard Lesson

Adventures in Nonfiction: A Guided Inquiry Journey

Students are guided through an informal exploration of nonfiction texts and child-oriented Websites, learning browsing and skimming techniques for the purpose of gathering interesting information.

 

Grades   3 – 6  |  Lesson Plan  |  Standard Lesson

American Folklore: A Jigsaw Character Study

Groups of students read and discuss American folklore stories, each group reading a different story. Using a jigsaw strategy, the groups compare character traits and main plot points of the stories. A diverse selection of American folk tales is used for this lesson, which is adaptable to any text set.

 

Grades   K – 2  |  Lesson Plan  |  Standard Lesson

Animal Study: From Fiction to Facts

Students listen to fiction and nonfiction read-alouds and explore selected Websites to identify factual information about animals. This lesson focuses on ants, but can be adapted to any animal.

 

Grades   K – 2  |  Lesson Plan  |  Standard Lesson

Book Sorting: Using Observation and Comprehension to Categorize Books

Students utilize their reading and writing skills as they think critically in order to sort books in multiple ways.

 

Grades   K – 2  |  Lesson Plan  |  Standard Lesson

Building a Matrix for Leo Lionni Books: An Author Study

In this author study, students listen to and discuss four books by Leo Lionni. They identify similarities and differences in the stories and then compare two stories of their choice.

 

Grades   K – 2  |  Lesson Plan  |  Standard Lesson

Collaborative Stories 1: Prewriting and Drafting

Students hone their teamwork skills and play off each other's writing strengths as they participate in prewriting activities for a story to be written collaboratively by the whole class.

 

Grades   K – 2  |  Lesson Plan  |  Minilesson

Collaborative Stories 2: Revising

Using a collaborative story written by students, the teacher leads a shared-revising activity to help students consider content when revising, with students participating in the marking of text revisions.

 

Grades   K – 2  |  Lesson Plan  |  Standard Lesson

Creating Class Rules: A Beginning to Creating Community

Students work together to create classroom rules by brainstorming why they are at school and what they need while they are there.

 

Grades   3 – 5  |  Lesson Plan  |  Standard Lesson

Creating Family Timelines: Graphing Family Memories and Significant Events

Students interview family members, and then create graphic family timelines based on important and memorable family events.

 

Grades   K – 2  |  Lesson Plan  |  Standard Lesson

Creating Question and Answer Books through Guided Research

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.

 

Grades   1 – 2  |  Lesson Plan  |  Standard Lesson

Draw a Math Story: From the Concrete to the Symbolic

Students create math stories by first drawing, then writing, and finally using math symbols to show addition or subtraction.

 

Grades   K – 1  |  Lesson Plan  |  Standard Lesson

Draw a Story: Stepping from Pictures to Writing

Students draw a series of pictures that tell a story, including character action, problem and solution. They ‘read’ their story to others, transcribe it into writing, and create an accordion book.

 

Grades   3 – 5  |  Lesson Plan  |  Standard Lesson

Exchanging Ideas by Sharing Journals: Interactive Response in the Classroom

Pairs of students respond to literature alternately in shared journals. Mini-lessons are presented on responding to prompts, creating dialogue, adding drawings, and asking and answering questions.

 

Grades   1 – 2  |  Lesson Plan  |  Standard Lesson

Giant Story Problems: Reading Comprehension through Math Problem-Solving

Students create posters using images, text, and mathematical equations to represent a story problem.

 

Grades   K – 2  |  Lesson Plan  |  Recurring Lesson

Literature Circles with Primary Students Using Self-Selected Reading

Students respond to self-selected books in journals, and talk about their books daily in small groups. The teacher guides students by offering suggestions and writing with them in dialogue journals.

 

Grades   K – 2  |  Lesson Plan  |  Recurring Lesson

Literature Response in Primary Classrooms

This step-by-step literature response template for use with read-alouds asks students to use drawing and writing to respond to increasingly-complex prompts which address literary elements as well as personal connections.

 

Grades   3 – 5  |  Lesson Plan  |  Unit

Question and Answer Books--From Genre Study to Report Writing

After exploring several question and answer books on a variety of topics, students research a topic and create their own class question and answer book.

 

Grades   3 – 5  |  Lesson Plan  |  Unit

Searching for Gold: A Collaborative Inquiry Project

Each small group of students researches one aspect of the same big topic, such as the Gold Rush, and teaches what they have learned to the rest of the class.

 

Grades   3 – 5  |  Lesson Plan  |  Standard Lesson

Seasonal Haiku: Writing Poems to Celebrate Any Season

After listening to haiku poetry, students use seasonal descriptive words to write their own haiku, following the traditional format. They then publish their poems by mounting them on illustrated backgrounds.

 

Grades   K – 2  |  Lesson Plan  |  Standard Lesson

Sentence Quest: Using Parts of Speech to Write Descriptive Sentences

Students learn about sentences by listing verbs, nouns, and adjectives. They use word cards to create descriptive sentences and work in groups to create the longest sentences they can.

 

Grades   3 – 5  |  Lesson Plan  |  Unit

Voting! What’s It All About?

Students explore a variety of sources for information about voting. They evaluate the information to determine if it is fact or opinion, and then create a graffiti wall about voting.

 

Grades   3 – 5  |  Lesson Plan  |  Standard Lesson

Who’s Got Mail? Using Literature to Promote Authentic Letter Writing

Students discuss and chart letter elements and write their own letters to adults at school, reinforcing letter-writing skills beyond the classroom lesson.