This article discusses the imaginative activities and assignments that teachers often assign that violate the text around which the lesson is focused and that mislead students about its meaning.
A Failure of the Imagination
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Adolescents and Digital Literacies: Learning Alongside Our Students
9 - 12
Professional Library
| Book
This book isn't about technology. It's about the teaching practices that technology enables. This book addresses the ways in which teachers and students work together to navigate continuous change and what it means to read, write, view, listen, and communicate in the twenty-first century.
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Analyzing Grammar Rants: An Alternative to Traditional Grammar Instruction
8 - 12
Professional Library
| Journal
Kenneth Lindblom and Patricia A. Dunn teach language awareness and use through published complaints about the teaching of grammar. Students are able to recognize issues of race and class that determine acceptable usage and learn the importance of audience in their own language use.
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A Conversation with Sara Zarr
6 - 12
Tune in to hear Sara Zarr discuss religious faith and some of the thinking behind her newest novel, Once Was Lost.
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Life's Journeys: Help Along the Way
6 - 12
Tap into teen and preteen readers' interest in adolescent-mentor relationships with these recommendations!
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Connection Stems
3 - 8
Printout
| Graphic Organizer
Connection Stems give students the language (and a reminder) to support their understanding by tying new learning to what they know about themselves and their world.
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K-W-L-S Chart
3 - 8
Printout
| Graphic Organizer
This printable extends the familiar K-W-L's means of organizing students' prior knowledge, formulating inquiry questions, and recording new learning by adding space for questions for further inquiry.
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Venn Diagram, 3 Circles
K - 12
Printout
| Graphic Organizer
Students use this graphic organizer to describe similarities and differences between three objects or ideas.
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I-Search Chart
9 - 12
Printout
| Graphic Organizer
As part of an I-Search writing process, this handout facilitates the formation of meaningful questions and subquestions for student inquiry.
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I-Search Process Reflection Chart
9 - 12
Printout
| Graphic Organizer
This chart asks students to consider their challenges and successes across the span of the research process, from question formulation to the final write-up.
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I-Chart
3 - 12
Printout
| Graphic Organizer
This printout assists students with generating meaningful questions about a topic and organizing their writing by using a structured guide while researching.
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Exit Slips
K - 12
Printout
| Assessment Tool
This printout provides prompts that help students reflect on and process new information and think critically, and offers teachers the opportunity to differentiate upcoming instruction based on these reflections.
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Connection Web
3 - 8
Printout
| Graphic Organizer
Students use this printout to expand on connections they have made to a text and use those details to write essays or create projects about the text.
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Double-Entry Journal
3 - 8
Printout
| Graphic Organizer
This printout helps students record ideas and situations from texts in one column, and their reactions in the second, thus making a connection between the text and themselves, another text, or the world.
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RAFT Writing Template
5 - 12
Printout
| Writing Starter
Students can utilize this printout to organize their writing as they learn to use the RAFT strategy. This printout enables students to clearly define their role, audience, format, and topic for writing.
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Seed Discussion Organizer
5 - 12
Printout
| Graphic Organizer
Students can utilize this printout to organize their thoughts as a new concept or content is introduced through a Seed Discussion. This printout readies students to acquire new knowledge by organizing what they know and what they're prepared to learn.
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Anticipation Guide
3 - 12
Printout
| Assessment Tool
Help establish a purpose for reading—and generate post-reading reflection and discussion—with this guide.
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K-W-L Chart
3 - 8
Printout
| Graphic Organizer
This K-W-L Chart, which tracks what a student knows (K), wants to know (W), and has learned (L) about a topic, can be used before, during, and after research projects.
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Making Connections
Grades
3 - 8
Strategy Guide
In this strategy guide, you'll learn to model how students can make three different kinds of connections (text-to-text, text-to-self, text-to-world). Students then use this knowledge to find their own personal connections to a text.
Grades
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Introducing New Content with Seed Discussions
Grades
5 - 12
Strategy Guide
In this strategy guide, you'll learn how to elicit ideas and conversation about new concepts or content by effectively holding a Seed Discussion in your classroom.