Students examine familiar car names for underlying connotations then proceed through a series of steps, increasing their control over language, until they select words with powerful connotations in their own writing.
Avalanche, Aztek, or Bravada? A Connotation Minilesson
Graphic Life Map
In this autobiographical prewriting activity, students brainstorm important memories, choose graphics to represent these memories, and then rank the events as low or high points in their lives.
Writing Reports in Kindergarten? Yes!
This lesson encourages young students to see themselves as writers with a message to convey. Three types of reports are provided to show what kindergartners and emergent writers can do.
Using Repetition and Picture Cues to Foster Independent Young Readers
Kindergartners share their knowledge of letters and sounds in a large group setting, giving teachers an assessment opportunity. Each student contributes a page to make a repetitive classroom book.
Using Children's Natural Curiosity to Lead to Descriptive Writing
Inspired by the book It Begins with an A, kindergarten students are invited to turn their curiosity and guesswork into a class book, complete with illustrated objects and descriptive language
Story Character Homepage
Students analyze personal homepages, as well as a character in a book they have read, and then create a homepage for the character.
Shared Spelling Strategies
Students increase their spelling accuracy and retention, while preserving fluency, by using sound, sight recall, and analyzing strategies instead of memorizing words, as they deal with spelling during drafting.
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.
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.
Expository Escapade—Detective's Handbook
Students create a Detective's Handbook based on a detective mystery they have read. The handbooks include expository and descriptive writing, as well as a letter.
Have Journal...Will Travel: Promoting Family Involvement in Literacy
Students build positive memories of literacy activities when they take turns taking home a book bag stuffed with items to encourage literacy interactions with their families.
What's in a Name? Teaching Concepts of Letter and Word
In this recurring activity, the process of choosing a helper for the day becomes a literacy activity, with the helper's name as a starting place for reading and writing.
Found Poems/Parallel Poems
Students compose found and parallel poems based on a descriptive passage they have chosen from a piece of literature they are reading.
From Stop Signs to the Golden Arches: Environmental Print
Students bring the print-rich environment of the community into the classroom through the use of environmental print, enabling emergent readers to delight in the realization that they are indeed readers.
Introducing Each Other: Interviews, Memoirs, Photos, and Internet Research
Students use their communication and writing skills as they interview a partner, write an article about them, and create a multimodal presentation to introduce their partner to the class.
Leading to Great Places in the Middle School Classroom
Students examine leads in existing texts and create alternative leads for them before revising leads in their own writing.
Listen, Look, and Learn: An Information-Gathering Process
After listening to and discussing the story Score One for the Sloths, primary students research the sloth. Students use a variety of resources, including an information wheel graphic organizer.
Memories Matter: The Giver and Descriptive Writing Memoirs
Using The Giver, students discuss the importance recorded history. This provides context for descriptive writing of students' own history in a lesson that integrates personal writing, research, and literary response.
Developing a Definition of Reading through Investigation in Middle School
Students collaboratively interact with a variety of texts as they define reading and develop their own Reader's Profiles modeled after online social networking sites.
Engaging Students with Library of Congress Primary Sources in the ELA Classroom Quick-Reference Guide (QRG)
Quick-Reference Guide (QRG) focused on "Engaging Students with Library of Congress Primary Sources in the ELA Classroom."