Students imagine and storyboard their own vision of the transformation of Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde and then evaluate movie portrayals.
Storyboarding the Transformation from Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde
Designing Elements of Story in Little Blue and Little Yellow
In this series of four lessons, students will explore key elements of design in Little Blue and
Little Yellow to learn about setting, character relationships, and plot.
Audience & Purpose: Evaluating Disney's Changes to the Hercules Myth
What drives changes to classic myths and fables? In this lesson students evaluate the changes Disney made to the myth of "Hercules" in order to achieve their audience and purpose.
Exploring the Power of Language with Six-Word Memoirs
What do the words we write really have to say about us? In this lesson, students examine the power of word choice as they write six-word memoirs of their lives.
"Roused by the Change of Scene": Analyzing a Film Adaptation of Jane Eyre
As part of their study of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, students read selected sections of the novel closely and compare their representation in the text to representations in the 2007 Masterpiece adaptation of Jane Eyre. They use the concepts of time/pacing, character, and theme to focus their analysis and to plan an adaptation of a scene of their choice.
Captioning the Civil Rights Movement: Reading the Images, Writing the Words
Teachers guide students to carefully view images from the Civil Rights Movement and write captions that accurately describe the images and/or their probable purposes.
Highlighting Out-of-School Language Expertise with Pop Culture Dictionaries
Students compose dictionary entries for words and phrases from pop culture texts (e.g., television shows, movies, lyrics, YouTube videos), connecting their definitions to their personal use of the terms.
Avalanche, Aztek, or Bravada? A Connotation Minilesson
Students examine familiar car names for underlying connotations then proceed through a series of steps, increasing their control over language, until they select words with powerful connotations in their own writing.
Native Americans Today
This lesson challenges students' views of Native Americans as a vanished people by asking them to compare their prior knowledge with information they gather while reading about contemporary Native Americans.
Weekly Writer's Blogs: Building a Reflective Community of Support
Students explore the conventions of blog writing while using it to self-reflect on their writing and communicate with classmates about each other's reflections.
Persuading Readers with Endorsement Letters
Students explore the genre of commercial endorsements, establishing characteristics and requirements for the genre. Each student then composes an endorsement of a product, service, company, or industry.
Cover to Cover: Comparing Books to Movies
Students compare and analyze novels and the movies adapted from them. They design new DVD covers and a related insert for the movies, reflecting their response to the movie version.
Designing Effective Poster Presentations
Students explore the genre of posters, review informational writing and visual design, and then design poster presentations to share in class or at a school-wide fair.
Technology and Copyright Law: A "Futurespective"
Students research and report on instances of how copyright laws have adapted to encompass new technologies. They write articles predicting copyright issues that may arise with new and future technologies.
Copyright Law: From Digital Reprints to Downloads
Students investigate how and why copyright law has changed over time, and apply this information to recent copyright issues, creating persuasive arguments based on the perspective of a particular group.
Exploring Plagiarism, Copyright, and Paraphrasing
Students investigate issues of plagiarism, fair use, and paraphrasing using KWL charts, discussion, and practice.
It's My Life: Multimodal Autobiography Project
Students express themselves verbally, visually, and musically by creating multimodal autobiographies, exchanging ideas with other students and sharing important events in their lives through PowerPoint presentations.