Students use Lord of the Flies to explore communication styles and techniques by writing text messages from one of the novel's characters to an imagined audience off the island.
Texting a Response to Lord of the Flies
Plot Structure: A Literary Elements Mini-Lesson
Students learn that the plot structure described by Freytag's Pyramid is actually quite familiar as they diagram the plots of a familiar story, a television show, and a narrative poem.
On a Musical Note: Exploring Reading Strategies by Creating a Soundtrack
Students create a soundtrack for a novel that they have read, as they engage in such traditional reading strategies as predicting, visualizing, and questioning.
You Know the Movie is Coming—Now What?
In this lesson, students read a literary text with the eye of a director, selecting scenes from the text and putting a cinematic spin on them.
Book Report Alternative: Glog That Book!
In this alternative book report, students identify the elements of fiction in books they have read by creating glogs, interactive multimedia posters, and then share their glogs.
Stapleless Book
The Stapleless Book can be used for taking notes while reading, making picture books, collecting facts, or creating vocabulary booklets . . . the possibilities are endless!
Reading on the Go
In this Strategy Guide, learn how to prepare yourself and your students for reading and note-taking in mobile environments.
Bringing Lessons to Life with Animoto
Using Animoto, a free Web 2.0 tool, students can develop short digital videos that include music, photos, video clips, and text as well as share their creations electronically.
Speak to Me: Teaching with Voki
Through Voki, a Web 2.0 tool, students create customizable avatars for class presentations for various purposes, such as presenting biographical information, expressing an opinion, or reading a poem.
Cover to Cover: Comparing Books to Movies
Students compare and analyze novels and the movies adapted from them. They design new DVD covers and a related insert for the movies, reflecting their response to the movie version.
Creating Character Blogs
Students view examples of blogs, learn the basic elements of blog creation, and then create a blog from the perspective of a fictional character.
Thoughtful Threads: Sparking Rich Online Discussions
Today's students love chatting online with friends. This lesson combines that love with literature. Students form literature circles and have meaningful online discussions about a literary work.
When I Was Young In...A Literature to Language Experience
Past meets present in this lesson in which students practice verb tense when they write personal short stories that they then publish in a flip book.
Collaborating, Writing, Linking: Using Wikis to Tell Stories Online
Students become online authors in this lesson in which they write and post a short story using wiki technology.
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.
The Big, Bad Wolf...Is This a Fact?
Reading is revamped in this lesson in which students use a multimedia approach to study the books by Seymour Simon.
Flip Book
The Flip Book is designed to allow users to type and illustrate tabbed flip books up to ten pages long. Students and teachers can use the flip book for taking notes while reading, making picture books, collecting facts, or creating question and answer booklets.
In 1564, William Shakespeare was born on this day.
Based on grade level, students learn about rhyming structure, experiment with the Shakespearean Insult Kit, or study scenes from Othello and watch an adaptation of that scene from the movie O.
Ezra Jack Keats was born on this day in 1916.
In celebration of Keats' birthday, students write stories that include some characters from Keats' books and practice using collage techniques with the Collage Machine.
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on this day.
Students compare the film versions of The Lord of the Rings and Tolkien's novels. Students then imagine how a scene in a current novel that they are reading would be filmed.