Readers are often transported to the places mentioned in texts through words and descriptions. This lesson invites students to create travel brochures about the setting of texts they have read.
Travel Brochures: Highlighting the Setting of a Story
Investigating the Holocaust: A Collaborative Inquiry Project
Students explore a variety of resources as they learn about the Holocaust. Working collaboratively, they investigate the materials, prepare oral responses, and produce a topic-based newspaper to complete their research.
Making History Come Alive Through Poetry and Song
Students compare the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald with the song, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," then create their own poetry about a historical event.
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.
Vote for Me! Making Presidential Commercials Using Avatars
After researching political platforms of past presidents through primary sources and other resources, students create commercials for these presidents using Voki, an online web tool that produces speaking avatars.
What Did George Post Today? Learning About People of the American Revolution Through Facebook
After researching famous people of the American Revolution, students create Facebook-like PowerPoint presentations to share their knowledge with classmates.
Glogging About Natural Disasters
After researching various natural disasters, students share their findings with each other using glogs, or through poster presentations.
Not Your Usual History Lesson: Writing Historical Markers
Students will develop their summarizing skills while learning about local history. They will learn to consider audience while selecting topics, conducting research and interviews, and writing historical markers for their town.
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.
Developing Citizenship Through Rhetorical Analysis
Students analyze rhetorical strategies in online editorials, building knowledge of strategies and awareness of local and national issues. This lesson teaches students connections between subject, writer, and audience and how rhetorical strategies are used in everyday writing.
Examining History with Maya Angelou's Poetry
To understand the historical background that influenced Maya Angelou's poems, students research events to produce trading cards using the ReadWriteThink Trading Card Student Interactive. Through the sharing of these trading cards, students understand the historical background as they analyze Angelou's poetry.
Huge Mistakes that Led to Catastrophe: Learning about Human-made Disasters throughout History
After researching various human-made disasters such as the BP oil spill, the sinking of the Titanic, and the Great Chicago Fire, students share their research in oral presentations. Then students pair up to compare and contrast their disasters using the Venn Diagram Student Interactive or the Venn diagram Mobile App.
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.
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."
Rosa Parks was born on this day in 1913.
Rosa Parks was committed to the struggle for social justice and human rights until her death, inspiring millions of people around the world. Today, we celebrate her!
Power of Picture Books, The: Using Content Area Literature in Middle School
Featuring descriptions and activities for fifty exceptional titles, Mary Jo Fresch and Peggy Harkins offer a wealth of ideas for harnessing the power of picture books to improve reading and writing in the content areas.
Technology That Powers Up Learning
By designing lessons to activate prior knowledge and linking these activities to reading and writing, teachers found that students were more engaged, that they learned more material more quickly, and that they more willingly incorporated reading into their lives.
A Conversation with Candace Fleming
In the world of young adult literature, some of today's best and most powerful stories are being told by authors of nonfiction. Tune in to hear Candace Fleming discuss the origins of The Family Romanov, research as a process of questioning, and how authors of nonfiction are pushing the envelope in books for today's teens.
Socratic Seminars
This strategy guide explains Socratic seminars and offers practical methods for applying the approach in your classroom to help students investigate multiple perspectives in a text.
Teaching with Zooming Slideshows through Prezi
Through Prezi, a web application, students create "zooming" presentations for various purposes, such as presenting research, defending an opinion, or sharing a digital story.