Using several translations of the same passage of Beowulf, this lesson introduces students to the idea that translation is not an objective practice, but that it involves "imaginative reconstruction."
Reading Literature in Translation: Beowulf as a Case Study
The History Behind Song Lyrics
Students research the items listed in the song "We Didn't Start the Fire" by Billy Joel, noting their historical relevance, and then document their findings using an online chart.
Literary Characters on Trial: Combining Persuasion and Literary Analysis
Students stage a mock trial for a literary character, with groups of students acting as the prosecution, defense, and jury.
Literary Scrapbooks Online: An Electronic Reader-Response Project
Students capture scraps of information from a variety of Web resources and use them to create an electronic scrapbook. Emphasis is placed on evaluating and citing resources.
Heroes Are Made of This: Studying the Character of Heroes
Designed to explore the hero and the heroic in literature, this unit asks students to discuss their ideas of heroism and analyze heroes in literature.
The Year I Was Born: An Autobiographical Research Project
Students explore the year they were born through interviews and research, and then weave the details into a newspaper or booklet, written from another person's point of view.
Investigating the Holocaust: A Collaborative Inquiry Project
Students explore a variety of resources as they learn about the Holocaust. Working collaboratively, they investigate the materials, prepare oral responses, and produce a topic-based newspaper to complete their research.
Collaborating on a Class Book: Exploring Before-During-After Sequences
Students and the teacher produce a class book through a group-writing activity, focusing on a basic before-during-after sequence of events.
Teaching Plot Structure through Short Stories
Students use an online graphic organizer to analyze the plot structure of "Jack and the Beanstalk" and three short stories.
Exploring Literature through Letter-Writing Groups
Students discuss literature through a series of letter exchanges, as a one-time assignment or throughout the year with the students discussing, and making connections among, a number of literary works.
Voting! What's It All About?
Students explore a variety of sources for information about voting. They evaluate the information to determine if it is fact or opinion, and then create a graffiti wall about voting.
Exploring Free Speech and Persuasion with Nothing But the Truth
Students read Avi's Nothing But the Truth and examine the First Amendment and student rights, and then decide whether the rights of the novel's protagonist, Philip, are violated.
Mail Time! An Integrated Postcard and Geography Study
Children write and receive postcards from friends and family, and then chart where all those postcards come from on a classroom map.
Creating Classroom Community by Crafting Themed Poetry Collections
Students create poetry collections with the theme of "getting to know each other." They study and then write a variety of forms of poetry to include in their collections.
Color Poems—Using the Five Senses to Guide Prewriting
Students use their five senses as a prewriting tool to guide their poetry writing as they compose free-form poems using imagery to describe a color.
Happily Ever After? Exploring Character, Conflict, and Plot in Dramatic Tragedy
By exploring the decisions points in a tragedy, students consider how the plot of the story can change if the key characters make a different choice at the turning point.
Compiling Poetry Collections and a Working Definition of Poetry
This unit introduces students to a variety of poetic forms and elements, as they compile their own collections of poetry.
Creating Question and Answer Books through Guided Research
This series of activities is designed to teach research strategies. Students use KWL charts to guide their inquiry and publish their results in a collaborative question and answer book.
Inquiry on the Internet: Evaluating Web Pages for a Class Collection
Students use Internet search engines and Web analysis checklists to evaluate online resources then write annotations that explain how and why the resources will be valuable to the class.
Paying Attention to Technology: Writing Technology Autobiographies
This lesson plan asks students to pay attention to the technologies they use. They graphically map their interactions with technology and compose narratives of their most significant interactions with technology.