Students thoroughly explore identifying synonyms and adjectives before using them to add variety and interest to their own writing.
Delicious, Tasty, Yummy: Enriching Writing with Adjectives and Synonyms
Dynamite Diamante Poetry
Introduce gerunds and review nouns, adjectives, and verbs through engaging read-alouds; then apply these concepts through collaborative word-sorting and poetry-writing activities.
Word Study with Henry and Mudge
Henry and Mudge is used in this lesson to build students' word recognition through rereading, high-frequency word banks, word studies, and writing.
Reading, Writing, Haiku Hiking! A Class Book of Picturesque Poems
Students learn haiku
write descriptive poems
and share with the class.
The Magnetism of Language: Parts of Speech, Poetry, and Word Play
What wonderful ways words work! The parts of speech are the highlight of this lesson in which students identify parts of speech in a nonsensical poem and then create their own wild and wacky rhymes.
Phonic Generalizations in Chrysanthemum
Students learn about word families by reading Kevin Henkes's book Chrysanthemum, identifying words with certain vowel pair endings, and reading words with similar endings.
Whole-to-Parts Phonics Instruction: Teaching Letter-Sound Correspondences
Students will find that learning onset and rime is a handy skill when they read the Jack and Jill rhyme.
Poetry Portfolios: Using Poetry to Teach Reading
Teach your students about sentence structure, rhyming words, sight words, vocabulary, and print concepts using a weekly poem.
Using a Predictable Text to Teach High-Frequency Words
After reading an engaging yet predictable text about a child looking for his cat, students use a similar format and high-frequency words to craft tales about their own lost pets.
Getting the ig in Pig: Helping Children Discover Onset and Rime
Students will need their language-building hard hats as they construct words using onset and rime, building vocabulary and phonics comprehension.
Digital Reflections: Expressing Understanding of Content Through Photography
Striking images can leave lasting impressions on viewers. In this lesson, students make textselfworld connections to a nature- or science-related topic as they collaboratively design a multimedia presentation.
Slipping, Sliding, Tumbling: Reinforcing Cause and Effect Through Diamante Poems
Writing, revising, and publishing are just a few of the tasks students will complete in order to take their cause-and-effect diamante poems from an idea to a reality.
Time Magazine launches its "Tom Swifty" contest today in 1963.
Students have fun with language by creating a special kind of pun with its origin in a literary source.
Make a Magnetic Poetry Set
Let children practice using different types of words in a fill-in-the-blank-story game before making their own word list for a magnetic poetry set.
It's Raining Cats and Dogs! Make a Children's Book about the Weather
Kids learn about weather sayings throughout history while writing and illustrating a book for younger children.
Send a Smile: Make a Card for a Special Occasion
Everyone loves getting a greeting card, especially if it's homemade. Make a funny or thoughtful greeting card or invitation with pictures and a poem, joke, or riddle.