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.

Students rework their forgotten/abandoned drafts by cutting and covering up selected words. By creatively manipulating text, they explore portal writing, a strategy for envisioning a new story or story direction.

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.

Using different writing/drawing materials (e.g., markers, color pencils, pastels, etc.), students learn how to communicate different moods and/or feelings to support their written ideas and how authors do the same through their work.

Students study Chaucer's Canterbury Tales not just for its rich language, but also for the insights it provides into the Middle Ages. Using wikis, students collaborate to study both literature and history on their own terms. They create meaning and build information networks using tools Chaucer himself would have loved.

This lesson supports third-through-sixth grade students as they communicate story setting to their readers through the use of visual image prompts. Activities include individual and cooperative learning group work, as well as whole class discussion.

Students use social networking sites to trace the development of characters by assuming the persona of a character on the class Ning and sending a set number of tweets, or status updates.

This lesson capitalizes on students' interest in social networking by asking students to build an online profile for a minor character in Charles Dickens' David Copperfield.

Students engage in a rich study of vocabulary words from the song "America the Beautiful," using music and art.

This lesson gives teachers resources and guidance to create reading, listening, computer, and poetry Literacy Centers in their own classrooms.

Students first analyze Walt Whitman's "I Hear America Singing," then use Whitman's poem as a model as they create their own list poems.

Students work together to create their own utopias, using blogs as the primary source of publication.

Students explore a range of resources on fair use and copyright then design their own audio public service announcements (PSAs), to be broadcast over the school's public address system.

Through listing and observation, students identify the many texts that they read and compose—including books and magazines, television shows, movies, audio broadcasts, hypertexts, and animations.

Explore the modern significance of an older text, such as Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, by asking students to create their own modern interpretation of specific events from the drama.

This lesson takes advantage of students' interest in music and audio sharing. Students investigate multiple perspectives in the music downloading debate and develop a persuasive argument for a classroom debate.

Students explore naming conventions in digital and non-digital settings then choose and explain specific names and profiles to represent themselves online.

Students explore the menu genre by analyzing existing menus from local restaurants. They review adjectives and descriptive writing and then work in groups to create their own custom menus.

Students research the effects of the Vietnam war on a specific group of people who were involved. They then create Internet scavenger hunts to share with the class.