Students will enjoy learning about physical and chemical changes as they turn their own photos into a narrated video using the iPad app SonicPics to illustrate (and eat) their results from a popcorn lab.
Poppin' Fun with Physical and Chemical Changes
Grades
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Book Report Alternative: Sharing Info from Informational Reading
5 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Reporting on an informational book doesn't have to be boring! Instead of the traditional book report format, students create newspapers using a Printing Press interactive to share what they have learned from reading informational books.
Grades
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A-B-C: It's Easy as 1-2-3 to Make Math Alphabet Books
4 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Using the Alphabet Organizer app, students create alphabet books to review math terms.
Grades
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Using Mobile Devices to Illustrate Literary Devices
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Using mobile devices, students capture images to represent literary devices. Students then reflect on why their images depict the literary devices.
Grades
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Making the Cut: Revising Memoirs by Detecting Clutter and Confusion
6 - 10
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Students improve a slide show by removing pictures. Their reasons for cutting pictures are translated into revision guidelines for cutting unnecessary words and sections from their rough drafts.
Grades
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Proverbs: At Home and around the World
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
In this lesson, students work with proverbs from home and from around the world, exploring how these maxims are tied to a culture's values and everyday experience.
Grades
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Proverbs: An Introduction
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Students are introduced to proverbs and explore how proverbs are often tied to a culture's values and everyday experience, although their meanings are not always readily apparent to us today.
Grades
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Action Is Character: Exploring Character Traits with Adjectives
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Students must "become" a character in a novel in order to describe themselves and other characters using powerful adjectives.
Grades
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What Am I? Teaching Poetry through Riddles
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Students explore figurative language in poetry by reading and writing riddle poems.
Grades
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Teaching Voice with Anthony Browne's Voices in the Park
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Students analyze Voices in the Park by Anthony Browne to determine how an author keeps an audience interested by creating voice and to applying that knowledge to their own writing.
Grades
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Book Report Alternative: Character and Author Business Cards
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Students respond to a book they have read by thinking symbolically to create a business card for one of the characters.
Grades
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Book Report Alternative: Summary, Symbol, and Analysis in Bookmarks
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Students make bookmarks on computers and share their ideas with other readers at their school, while practicing summarizing, recognizing symbols, and writing reviews—all for an authentic audience.
Grades
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A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words: From Image to Detailed Narrative
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
The old cliche, "A picture is worth a thousand words" is put to the test when students write their own narrative interpretations of events shown in an image.
Grades
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Writing a Flashback and Flash-Forward Story Using Movies and Texts as Models
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Using the film The Sandlot, students are introduced to the literary devices of flashbacks and flash-forwards. They then write their own stories using those devices.
Grades
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Breaking Barriers, Building Bridges: Critical Discussion of Social Issues
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Through a series of picture book read-alouds, students engage in critical discussion of complex issues of race, class, and gender.
Grades
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Graphic Life Map
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
In this autobiographical prewriting activity, students brainstorm important memories, choose graphics to represent these memories, and then rank the events as low or high points in their lives.
Grades
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Found Poems/Parallel Poems
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Students compose found and parallel poems based on a descriptive passage they have chosen from a piece of literature they are reading.
Grades
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Leading to Great Places in the Middle School Classroom
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Students examine leads in existing texts and create alternative leads for them before revising leads in their own writing.
Grades
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Memories Matter: The Giver and Descriptive Writing Memoirs
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
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.
Grades
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Developing a Definition of Reading through Investigation in Middle School
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Students collaboratively interact with a variety of texts as they define reading and develop their own Reader's Profiles modeled after online social networking sites.