In small groups, students closely examine one sentence from the Gettysburg Address and create a multigenre project communicating what they have discovered about the meaning and significance of the text.
Engaging Students in a Collaborative Exploration of the Gettysburg Address
Book Report Alternative: Writing Resumes for Characters in Historical Fiction
Students write resumes for historical fiction characters. They first explore help wanted ads to see what employers want, and then draft resumes for the characters they've chosen.
Boars and Baseball: Making Connections
In this lesson, students will make text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections after reading In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson. After sharing and discussing connections, students choose and plan a project that makes a personal connection to the text.
Writing Acrostic Poems with Thematically Related Texts in the Content Areas
Students read thematically related texts, scaffolded from simple to complex, to help them gather necessary concept vocabulary and background knowledge in a content area. They then write acrostic poems to organize and present their learning in a creative way.
Captioning the Civil Rights Movement: Reading the Images, Writing the Words
Teachers guide students to carefully view images from the Civil Rights Movement and write captions that accurately describe the images and/or their probable purposes.
Writing and Assessing an Autobiographical Incident
Students build upon their knowledge of biographies to write their own autobiographical incident. After going through a process of revision, they use a rubric to assess their work.
Trading Card Creator
This tool provides a fun and useful way to explore a variety of topics such as a character in a book, a person or place from history, or even a physical object. An excellent tool to for summarizing or as a prewriting exercise for original stories.
Cultural Connections and Writing for Change
A little understanding can go a long way. After learning about difficulties that Palestinian youths face, students will write a letter to an official discussing these issues.
Using Historical Fiction to Learn About the Civil War
Students in grades 4 and 5 discuss inferential comprehension and visualization as they use a think-aloud questioning strategy to develop a deeper understanding of a historical novel.
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.
Learning About Research and Writing Using the American Revolution
Students across the board will get a kick out of researching a historical figure from the American Revolution to create an acrostic poem.
Writers' Workshop: The Biographical Sketch
Students use the faces and places they learn about in their research to write a biography about a contemporary or historical figure.
Storytelling in the Social Studies Classroom
People make the past come alive as students research and then share stories about famous Americans who promoted democratic ideals.
Flying to Freedom: Tar Beach and The People Could Fly
Students look to the past and use historical context to compare and contrast two characters from folktales.
Book Cover Creator
The Book Cover Creator is designed to allow users to type and illustrate front book covers, front and back covers, and full dust jackets. Students can use the tool to create new covers for books that they read as well as to create covers for books they write individually or as a class.
Today is Leap Day!
Our solar year is 365.24219 days. Since our calendar does not deal in partial days, every four years, we add an additional day to February.
Annie Moore becomes the first immigrant to enter Ellis Island in 1892.
Students explore online resources about Ellis Island, interview an immigrant in the area, and publish their stories.
Veterans Day is celebrated in the United States today.
Students write biographical poems about a soldier.
John Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed, was born in 1775.
Students use the Timeline Tool to organize details about Chapman's life, the Venn Diagram to organize information, and the Shape Poems Interactive to create poems about apples or Johnny Appleseed.
Books Will Take You There!
While enjoying a book that features a journey, children write postcards from the perspective of the main character for each stop along the trip.