Students craft comic scripts using clear, descriptive, and detailed writing that shows (illustrates) and tells (directs). After peers create an artistic interpretation of the script, students revise their original scripts.
The Comic Book Show and Tell
Defining Literacy in a Digital World
Through listing and observation, students identify the many texts that they read and composeincluding books and magazines, television shows, movies, audio broadcasts, hypertexts, and animations.
Plot Structure: A Literary Elements Mini-Lesson
Students learn that the plot structure described by Freytag's Pyramid is actually quite familiar as they diagram the plots of a familiar story, a television show, and a narrative poem.
Audio Broadcasts and Podcasts: Oral Storytelling and Dramatization
After exploring Orson Welles' 1938 broadcast of H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds, students create their own audio dramatization of a text they have read.
So What Do You Think? Writing a Review
Writing a review of an author's work challenges students to develop their critical thinking skills. It provides an opportunity for students to speak their mindsand to enjoy being heard.
Audio Listening Practices: Exploring Personal Experiences with Audio Texts
Students keep a daily diary that records how and when they listen to audio texts, then analyze the details and compare their results to published reports on American radio listeners.
On a Musical Note: Exploring Reading Strategies by Creating a Soundtrack
Students create a soundtrack for a novel that they have read, as they engage in such traditional reading strategies as predicting, visualizing, and questioning.
Star-Crossed Lovers Online: Romeo and Juliet for a Digital Age
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.
Copyright Infringement or Not? The Debate over Downloading Music
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.
You Know the Movie is Coming—Now What?
In this lesson, students read a literary text with the eye of a director, selecting scenes from the text and putting a cinematic spin on them.
Naming in a Digital World: Creating a Safe Persona on the Internet
Students explore naming conventions in digital and non-digital settings then choose and explain specific names and profiles to represent themselves online.
Paying Attention to Technology: Reviewing a Technology
Students read and analyze technology reviews to establish the characteristics of the genre. They then compose their own reviews on a technology of their choice.
Argument, Persuasion, or Propaganda? Analyzing World War II Posters
Students analyze World War II posters, as a group and then independently, to explore how argument, persuasion and propaganda differ.
Building Vietnam War Scavenger Hunts through Web-Based Inquiry
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.
Exploring Satire with The Simpsons
This lesson uses an example from popular culture, The Simpsons, as a means to explore the literary technique of satire and to analyze a satirical work.
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.
Propaganda Techniques in Literature and Online Political Ads
Students analyze propaganda techniques used in pieces of literature and political advertisements. They then look for propaganda in other media, such as print ads and commercials.
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.
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.