Sarah Dennis-Shaw

Grades   3 – 5  |  Lesson Plan  |  Standard Lesson

Building Classroom Community Through the Exploration of Acrostic Poetry

What do your students think about each other? Find out as you teach them the concepts of acrostic poems and challenge them to write an uplifting acrostic about a classmate.

 

Grades   K – 2  |  Lesson Plan  |  Recurring Lesson

Building Phonemic Awareness with Phoneme Isolation

Students improve phonemic awareness through games and chants that help them isolate beginning and ending sounds and connect them with their written symbols (graphemes).

 

Grades   2 – 4  |  Lesson Plan  |  Standard Lesson

Exploring the Subtext Strategy: Thinking Beyond the Text

What is it like to have a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day? Students find out in this lesson in which they “become” the characters in Judith Viorst’s book.

 

Grades   3 – 5  |  Lesson Plan  |  Standard Lesson

Exploring World Cultures Through Folk Tales

Journey around the world with students as they read a Japanese, African, or Welsh folk tale, create a visual depiction of the tale, research the tale's culture, and present findings.

 

Grades   3 – 5  |  Lesson Plan  |  Standard Lesson

Fishing for Readers: Identifying and Writing Effective Opening "Hooks"

Good writers "hook" their readers in the very first sentences. In this lesson, students learn how to cast an attention-grabbing hook in their writing to effectively draw in readers' attention.

 

Grades   K – 2  |  Lesson Plan  |  Standard Lesson

Generating Rhymes: Developing Phonemic Awareness

Traditional chants and songs are adapted to help young students recognize and generate rhymes. The word and letter patterns involved in rhymes provide a stepping stone to reading skills.

 

Grades   3 – 5  |  Lesson Plan  |  Recurring Lesson

Guided Comprehension: Evaluating Using the Meeting of the Minds Technique

Based on the Guided Comprehension Model developed by Maureen McLaughlin and Mary Beth Allen, this lesson introduces students to the strategy of evaluating, using the Meeting of the Minds technique.

 

Grades   3 – 6  |  Lesson Plan  |  Recurring Lesson

Guided Comprehension: Knowing How Words Work Using Semantic Feature Analysis

Based on the Guided Comprehension Model developed by Maureen McLaughlin and Mary Beth Allen, this lesson introduces students to the comprehension strategy of knowing how words work.

 

Grades   4 – 6  |  Lesson Plan  |  Standard Lesson

Guided Comprehension: Making Connections Using a Double-Entry Journal

Based on the Guided Comprehension Model by Maureen McLaughlin and Mary Beth Allen, this lesson helps students learn three types of connections (text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-to-world) using a double-entry journal.

 

Grades   4 – 6  |  Lesson Plan  |  Recurring Lesson

Guided Comprehension: Monitoring Using the INSERT Technique

Based on the Guided Comprehension Model developed by Maureen McLaughlin and Mary Beth Allen, this lesson introduces students to the comprehension strategy of monitoring.

 

Grades   3 – 6  |  Lesson Plan  |  Recurring Lesson

Guided Comprehension: Previewing Using an Anticipation Guide

Based on the Guided Comprehension Model developed by Maureen McLaughlin and Mary Beth Allen, this lesson introduces students to the comprehension strategy of previewing.

 

Grades   3 – 6  |  Lesson Plan  |  Standard Lesson

Guided Comprehension: Self-Questioning Using Question-Answer Relationships

Guided comprehension moves your students beyond decoding to become independent readers. Generating questions to guide reading helps readers make connections with the text and supports independent comprehension of new texts.

 

Grades   3 – 6  |  Lesson Plan  |  Recurring Lesson

Guided Comprehension: Summarizing Using the QuIP Strategy

Students learn to use the QuIP (questions into paragraphs) comprehension strategy to organize information and then synthesize it in writing.

 

Grades   4 – 6  |  Lesson Plan  |  Recurring Lesson

Guided Comprehension: Visualizing Using the Sketch-to-Stretch Strategy

Guided comprehension moves your middle-grade students beyond decoding to become successful, independent readers. The sketch-to-stretch strategy encourages students to use "brain TV" to help them understand a text through visualization.

 

Grades   3 – 5  |  Lesson Plan  |  Standard Lesson

Multipurpose Poetry: Introducing Science Concepts and Increasing Fluency

Creepy crawlers, hoppers, and flyers are the focus of this lesson in which students chorally read poems about insects and use the Internet to locate facts about their assigned insects.

 

Grades   3 – 5  |  Lesson Plan  |  Standard Lesson

Peer Edit With Perfection: Effective Strategies

Students take a fresh look at the revision process and help one another polish their written work through a peer-editing strategy that is simple, systematic, and constructive.

 

Grades   6 – 8  |  Lesson Plan  |  Standard Lesson

Slipping, Sliding, Tumbling: Reinforcing Cause and Effect Through Diamante Poems

Writing, revising, and publishing are just a few of the tasks students will complete in order to take their cause-and-effect diamante poems from an idea to a reality.

 

Grades   K – 5  |  Lesson Plan  |  Standard Lesson

Spelling Cheerleading: Integrating Movement and Spelling Generalizations

"2-4-6-8, students will be spelling great" in this lesson that teaches the y rule for adding suffixes through cheering the spelling of words aloud, word sorts, and writing stories.

 

Grades   3 – 7  |  Lesson Plan  |  Standard Lesson

Strategic Reading and Writing: Summarizing Antislavery Biographies

Antislavery heroes are the focus of this lesson. Students research a historical figure who played a key role in the abolition of slavery, and then create a three-dimensional biographical mobile.

 

Grades   K – 2  |  Lesson Plan  |  Standard Lesson

Teaching Short-Vowel Discrimination Using Dr. Seuss Rhymes

Through the contrast of short-vowel patterns and use of Dr. Seuss rhymes, students apply their knowledge of vowel sounds in reading and spelling new words.

 

Grades   K – 2  |  Lesson Plan  |  Standard Lesson

Text Talk: Julius, the Baby of the World

Students are asked to "talk" with Kevin Henkes’ Julius, the Baby of the World by using open-ended questions to help them interpret the language, plot, and characters of the story.

 

Grades   3 – 5  |  Lesson Plan  |  Minilesson

To, Too, or Two: Developing an Understanding of Homophones

The classroom becomes a stage in this interactive lesson in which students sing, act, and design comic strips to learn the meanings and spellings of common homophones.

 

Grades   4 – 5  |  Lesson Plan  |  Standard Lesson

Vote for Me! Developing, Writing, and Evaluating Persuasive Speeches

This lesson encourages students in grades 4 and 5 to think critically and write persuasively by focusing on preparing, presenting, and evaluating mock campaign speeches.

 

Grades   6 – 8  |  Lesson Plan  |  Standard Lesson

Wading Through the Web: Teaching Internet Research Strategies

The Internet is often the first stop for student researchers, but few know how to vet sources effectively. In this lesson, students learn about Internet research through an interactive PowerPoint presentation.