Using different writing/drawing materials (e.g., markers, color pencils, pastels, etc.), students learn how to communicate different moods and/or feelings to support their written ideas and how authors do the same through their work.
Color My World: Expanding Meaning Potential through Media
Utilizing Visual Images for Creating and Conveying Setting in Written Text
This lesson supports third-through-sixth grade students as they communicate story setting to their readers through the use of visual image prompts. Activities include individual and cooperative learning group work, as well as whole class discussion.
Opening the Door for Reading: Sharing Favorite Texts to Build Community
In this lesson, students build classroom community by exploring environmental print and a teacher-created display that focuses on a favorite book. They then create and share their own presentations.
Designing Elements of Story in Little Blue and Little Yellow
In this series of four lessons, students will explore key elements of design in Little Blue and
Little Yellow to learn about setting, character relationships, and plot.
Read Across America Day: Celebrate a Nation of Diverse Readers
Bring the celebration of reading and literacy into your classroom, library, school, and home all year long.
Violent Red, Ogre Green, and Delicious White: Expanding Meaning Potential through Media
This article reports on the meaning potential of daily access to drawing/writing media for widening and deepening meaning construction.
Connection Web
Students use this printout to expand on connections they have made to a text and use those details to write essays or create projects about the text.
Earth Verse: Using Science in Poetry
Students shape up their reading, writing, and listening skills in this lesson by creating original diamante, acrostic, and shape poems about science.
Promoting Cultural Values Through Alphabet Books
C is for Culture in this lesson in which students research a culture different from their own and compile an alphabet book that showcases cultural symbols for each letter of the alphabet.
Make a Splash! Using Dramatic Experience to "Explode the Moment"
Students will have a blast as they use descriptive language to write about an "explosive" and dramatic moment in their lives.
Descriptive Video: Using Media Technology to Enhance Writing
Students will have a roaring good time when they watch a scene from The Lion King as a way to compare standard and described programming media.
A Musical Prompt: Postcards From the Concert
Students won't miss a beat in this musical lesson that combines listening with personal response on a postcard.
Developing Inferential Comprehension Through DL-TA and Discussion Webs
Students will love unwrapping this lesson about before, during, and after reading activities based on Margaree King Mitchell's book, Grandaddy's Gift.
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.
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.
What's Under the Slide? Making Inferences Using Microscopes
Students hone their critical thinking skills by learning how to make inferences from textual clues.
Engaging With Cause-and-Effect Relationships Through Creating Comic Strips
Students demonstrate their knowledge of cause-and-effect relationships by creating original comic strips and sharing their completed work in an oral presentation format.
Buzz! Whiz! Bang! Using Comic Books to Teach Onomatopoeia
This lesson is sure to sizzle, not fizzle, as students use comic strips to find onomatopoetic words, develop a vocabulary list from the words, and discuss why writers use onomatopoeia.
The Connection Between Poetry and Music
Students won't miss a beat in this reading fluency lesson that combines music and poetry.
Reading, Writing, Haiku Hiking! A Class Book of Picturesque Poems
Students learn haiku
write descriptive poems
and share with the class.