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.
American Folklore: A Jigsaw Character Study
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.
Vocabulary Solutions: A Mixture of Science, Conversation, and Writing
In this lesson, students conduct a science experiment and later discuss the events of the lab during shared writing. Students explain the procedure in their own words and then revise to include content specific vocabulary. Finally, students reflect on new words added to their writing using the Trading Card Creator interactive.
Learning about Clouds with Haikus
Using a mobile app or Interactive activity, students write haikus describing various types of clouds that they have studied.
A-B-C: It's Easy as 1-2-3 to Make Math Alphabet Books
Using the Alphabet Organizer app, students create alphabet books to review math terms.
Quantitative Civic Reasoning: A Guide for Centering Civic Innovation in Math and English Language Arts Classrooms
This guide explores quantitative civic reasoning in English and math classrooms.
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.
Developing Academic Vocabulary
In this Strategy Guide Series, you'll find creative and compatible ways to build, maintain, and extend students' vocabulary across academic disciplines.
Using Word Walls to Develop and Maintain Academic Vocabulary
In this guide, you will learn how to use Word Walls to support vocabulary development and retention.
Using Disciplinary Facets to Deepen Academic Vocabulary Knowledge
In this guide, you will learn how to use the disciplinary facets strategy to support vocabulary development across contexts and academic disciplines.
Using Generative Sentences to Apply Academic Vocabulary
In this guide, you will learn how to use generative sentences to give students opportunities to apply their knowledge of new words in writing.
Introducing Ideas and Vocabulary with the Concept Sort
A Concept Sort is a vocabulary and comprehension strategy used with students to introduce new topics and/or familiarize students with new vocabulary.
Using Paired Reading to Increase Fluency and Peer Cooperation
In this strategy, students read aloud to each other, pairing more fluent readers with less fluent readers. This strategy can also be used to pair older students with younger students to create "reading buddies."
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.
Website Planning in a Bilingual Classroom
Students complete a family survey and plan a website to share the responses, increasing their understanding and appreciation of their own families and cultures, and their classmates as well.
Q is for Duck: Using Alphabet Books With Struggling Writers
A is for zoo? Q is for duck? The alphabet as students know it is transformed when students create a class book that contains clever associations for each letter of the alphabet.
Using Pictures to Build Schema for Social Studies Content
How do you read an image? Students find out in this lesson in which they "read" several images of the Boston Massacre to better understand the event and recognize effects of propaganda.
Multipurpose Poetry: Introducing Science Concepts and Increasing Fluency
Creepy crawlers, hoppers, and fliers 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.
Exploring Compare and Contrast Structure in Expository Texts
Students build their understanding of the terms compare and contrast by participating in class discussions, using Internet resources, working collaboratively, and by visually representing information in a Venn diagram.
Celebrate Digital Learning Day today.
Students reflect on recent learning and the role digital tools and media have played in supporting or enhancing it.