Students create math stories by first drawing, then writing, and finally using math symbols to show addition or subtraction.
Draw a Math Story: From the Concrete to the Symbolic
Grades
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Book Reviews, Annotation, and Web Technology
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Unit
Students work in groups to create annotated book reviews with links to topics of interest related to their book.
Grades
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Creating Class Rules: A Beginning to Creating Community
K - 2
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Students work together to create classroom rules by brainstorming why they are at school and what they need while they are there.
Grades
|
Choose Your Own Adventure: A Hypertext Writing Experience
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Unit
Students analyze "choose your own adventure" stories and brainstorm to develop setting, characters, and plots for their own adventures stories and related Websites.
Grades
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Technical Reading and Writing Using Board Games
3 - 5
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Students celebrate a novel they have read and get hands-on experience with technical writing by creating a board game based on the novel and writing the instructions for it.
Grades
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Peer Review: Narrative
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Minilesson
This minilesson guides student in using the PQP techniquePraise–Question–Polishto offer concrete and useful peer review feedback.
Grades
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Using Picture Books to Teach Setting Development in Writing Workshop
3 - 5
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Students use a graphic organizer to analyze setting development in picture books. They then apply what they have learned to their own writing.
Grades
|
Letter Poems Deliver: Experimenting with Line Breaks in Poetry Writing
3 - 5
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Students explore letter poems and experiment with writing letters as poems, using the placement of line breaks to enhance rhythm, sound, meaning, and appearance.
Grades
|
What Makes Poetry? Exploring Line Breaks
3 - 5
Lesson Plan
| Minilesson
Students read various poems and explore why lines are broken where they are and how they affect rhythm, sound, meaning, and appearance in poetry.
Grades
|
Breaking Barriers, Building Bridges: Critical Discussion of Social Issues
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Through a series of picture book read-alouds, students engage in critical discussion of complex issues of race, class, and gender.
Grades
|
Who's Got Mail? Using Literature to Promote Authentic Letter Writing
3 - 5
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Students discuss and chart letter elements and write their own letters to adults at school, reinforcing letter-writing skills beyond the classroom lesson.
Grades
|
Growing Readers and Writers with Help from Mother Goose
K
Lesson Plan
| Recurring Lesson
Watch Mother Goose work her magic! This lesson uses nursery rhymes to help emergent readers remember the letters and their sounds and identify word chunks.
Grades
|
Using Repetition and Picture Cues to Foster Independent Young Readers
K
Lesson Plan
| Minilesson
Kindergartners share their knowledge of letters and sounds in a large group setting, giving teachers an assessment opportunity. Each student contributes a page to make a repetitive classroom book.
Grades
|
Book Clubs: Reading for Fun
3 - 5
Lesson Plan
| Recurring Lesson
This lesson describes how small groups of students can plan meetings to discuss what they've read in a "just for fun" book club they've organizedand that they control.
Grades
|
Native Americans Today
3 - 5
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
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.
Grades
|
Using Children's Natural Curiosity to Lead to Descriptive Writing
K - 2
Lesson Plan
| Minilesson
Inspired by the book It Begins with an A, kindergarten students are invited to turn their curiosity and guesswork into a class book, complete with illustrated objects and descriptive language
Grades
|
Poetry from Prose
3 - 5
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Working in small groups, students compose found and parallel poems based on a descriptive passage they have chosen from a piece of literature they are reading.
Grades
|
Shared Spelling Strategies
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Recurring Lesson
Students increase their spelling accuracy and retention, while preserving fluency, by using sound, sight recall, and analyzing strategies instead of memorizing words, as they deal with spelling during drafting.
Grades
|
Learning to Learn with Miss Alaineus: A Vocabulary Disaster
3 - 5
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Modeled on the activities in Miss Alaineus: A Vocabulary Disaster, a picture book, students combine vocabulary exploration with word play by planning their own vocabulary parade.
Grades
|
Get the Reel Scoop: Comparing Books to Movies
3 - 5
Lesson Plan
Students compare a book to its film adaptation, and then perform readers theater of a scene from the book that they feel was not well represented in the movie version.