Students learn about the life and music of John Lennon, write a short story from their lives integrating lyrics from some of their favorite songs, and create a class book of stories.
Songs of Our Lives: Using Lyrics to Write Stories
The Mysteries of Harris Burdick: Using Illustrations to Guide Writing
Students use illustrations from The Mysteries of Harris Burdick as a guide to write mysteries
and then present their stories to the class for students to discuss to which illustration each
story corresponds.
Blending the Past with Today's Technology: Using Prezi to Prepare for Historical Fiction
To prepare for literature circles featuring historical novels, students research the decades of the 1930s to the 1990s and share their information using Prezi, a web application for creating multimedia presentations.
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.
Using the RAFT Writing Strategy
This strategy guide introduces the RAFT technique and offers practical ideas for using this technique to teach students to experiment with various perspectives in their writing.
Choosing, Chatting, and Collecting: Vocabulary Self-Collection Strategy
Students identify interesting words from Shakespeare's plays and add them to a classroom vocabulary collection.
Reading Movies and TV: Learning the "Language" of Moving-Image Texts
Introduce students to the idea that movies and TV have their own language and grammar, which gives them special ways of telling their stories.
Lights, Camera, Action: Interviewing a Book Character
Students get the inside scoop on a story when they create interview questions and answers for characters in the books they read.
Profile Publisher
Students use the Profile Publisher to draft online social networking profiles, yearbook profiles, and newspaper or magazine profiles for themselves, other real or fictional characters.
Celebrate El Día de Los Niños/El Día de Los Libros (Children's Day/Book Day)!
Using the Book Cover Creator, students write and share their own multilingual stories.
June 14 is Flag Day in the U.S.
Students consider how America, Americans, and the flag are represented in different patriotic songs and hypothesize about the reasons for their differences.
Celebrate blues legend Robert Johnson's birthday.
Students learn about blues music and brainstorm subjects that might give them "the blues." Finally, they write their own blues lyrics and have the option to perform.
Music in Our Schools Month is in March.
Students explore the effects of music on a story by reading a story, novel, or play, viewing the musical version, and comparing the two. Students can then select a text read in class and create a musical adaptation.
Amazing Biographies: Writing About People Who Change the World
After reading about historical figures and other important people that have changed the world, children choose someone that they consider to be "amazing"—either someone they've heard about or someone they know—and create a book page that highlights this person.
Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein was published in 1974.
Students are introduced to a Silverstein verse and asked for their impressions. They then draw that they imagine when they read one of his lines and then write a line or two to continue the passage.
Let's Go On A Poetry Walk!
The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and you're surrounded by brilliant shades of green! Observe and collect sensory images from nature and use the sights, sounds, smells, and textures to create original nature poetry.