The Word Wizard activities in this lesson transform phonics from drudgery into delight! Students manipulate letters to make different words.
Word Wizards: Students Making Words
Lights, Camera, Action: Interviewing a Book Character
Students get the inside scoop on a story when they create interview questions and answers for characters in the books they read.
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.
Multimedia Responses to Content Area Topics Using Fact-"Faction"-Fiction
Students climb into the mind of a spider in this lesson that asks them to compose a spider diary using spider facts, fiction, and "faction"fiction that sounds like fact.
Gingerbread Phonics
"Run, run, as fast as you can." Students use this refrain from The Gingerbread Man to learn letter-sound correspondence. Students use their new skills to write an online story.
From Fact to Fiction: Drawing and Writing Stories
Students gather factual information about frogs and toads to create nonfiction and fiction stories. Drawing is used for prewriting.
The Big, Bad Wolf...Is This a Fact?
Reading is revamped in this lesson in which students use a multimedia approach to study the books by Seymour Simon.
The Two Voices of the ow Spelling Pattern
Variable vowels are the focus of this lesson; students use nursery rhymes and ow to study how vowels can change their sounds according to different spelling patterns.
In the Poet's Shoes: Performing Poetry and Building Meaning
Students take poetic license when they interpret William Carlos William's poem "The Red Wheelbarrow" to help create a poem of their own.
Protecting Our Precious Planet: Sharing the Message of Earth Day
Students discover that they can make a world of difference when they participate in the online Earth Day bag program.
Pairing Fiction With Poetry and Performance
Make connections across genres and across cultures to engage students in the study of literary voice and themes. Comprehension skills and vocabulary also come into play, especially for English language learners, as students read a novel and related poems, then write and perform original poems related to the novel.
Getting to Know You: Developing Short Biographies to Build Community
How well do your students know their peers? Students transform into investigative reporters as they interview a classmate, compile the biographical data into graphic form, and introduce the student to the class.
A Schema-Building Study With Patricia Polacco
Students use the Semantic Impressions and Possible Sentences strategies to write about Patricia Polacco's books Chicken Sunday and Rechenka's Egg, complete a character study, and write using a WebQuest.
A-Z: Learning About the Alphabet Book Genre
Students increase their understanding of alphabet books by participating in a variety of reading and writing activities.
Two Thumbs Up! Get Students Writing and Publishing Book Reviews
Students evaluate book reviews written by other children, discussing their components and effectiveness, and write reviews of favorite books to record on video or post online.
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.
Bingo! Using Environmental Print to Practice Reading
The game Bingo is transformed in this lesson in which students use symbols and images to make connections to environmental print through the use of personalized Bingo cards.
Stop Signs, McDonald's, and Cheerios: Writing With Environmental Print
Students use logos from everyday life to identify individual letters and then create their own captions for the images.
Blast Off! Vocabulary Instruction Using a Virtual Moon Trip
3, 2, 1... Blast off! Students learn new vocabulary by taking a virtual field trip to the moon, read-alouds, creating a picture dictionary, and completing a final writing activity.
Storytelling in the Social Studies Classroom
People make the past come alive as students research and then share stories about famous Americans who promoted democratic ideals.