Interpreting art is a subjective process. In this lesson, students write written responses analyzing a work of art and use feedback from their peers to revise or confirm their initial responses.
Reciprocal Revision: Making Peer Feedback Meaningful
Choosing, Chatting, and Collecting: Vocabulary Self-Collection Strategy
Students identify interesting words from Shakespeare's plays and add them to a classroom vocabulary collection.
Engaging With Cause-and-Effect Relationships Through Creating Comic Strips
Students demonstrate their knowledge of cause-and-effect relationships by creating original comic strips and sharing their completed work in an oral presentation format.
Reading Idol! Bringing Readers Theatre Center Stage in Your Classroom
Students produce a Readers Theatre performance to compete to be named the Reading Idol. Students vote on the final performances and record them as podcasts.
The Connection Between Poetry and Music
Students won't miss a beat in this reading fluency lesson that combines music and poetry.
A World of Readers: Libraries Around the World
Bookworms will enjoy the bytes they find in this lesson as they research and share information about online library services in places around the world.
Shared Experiences, Individual Impressions: Buddies Create PowerPoint Stories
Stories and snapshots of school-related experiences are the perfect sources of inspiration for students as they create PowerPoint presentations with the help of an older student.
Creative Writing Through Wordless Picture Books
Students are exposed to wordless picture books and begin developing story lines, both orally and in writing, using an online, interactive story map.
Music and Me: Visual Representations of Lyrics to Popular Music
Students will whistle while they work on this lesson, creating a photomontage movie of their interpretation of a favorite song's lyrics that will end everyone's day on a high note.
Play Ball! Encouraging Critical Thinking Through Baseball Questions
Cooperation and critical thinking are the name of the game as students use baseball facts they find online to create trivia questions for a class Jeopardy game.
Using Folk Tales: Vowel Influences on the Letter G
Gentle, gigantic, gracefuldo these g words describe the giant in Jack and the Beanstalk? Students will explore the hard and soft g sounds by studying fairy tales and animals.
Can You Convince Me? Developing Persuasive Writing
Through a classroom game and resource handouts, students learn about the techniques used in persuasive oral arguments and apply them to independent persuasive writing activities.
Text Talk: Julius, the Baby of the World
Students are asked to "talk" with Kevin Henkes' Julius, the Baby of the World by using open-ended questions to help them interpret the language, plot, and characters of the story.
Poetry: A Feast to Form Fluent Readers
Students improve their reading fluency by selecting a poem online to perform in class.
Celebrate El Día de Los Niños/El Día de Los Libros (Children's Day/Book Day)!
Using the Book Cover Creator, students write and share their own multilingual stories.
Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman in the US to earn a MD degree in 1849.
"Famous Firsts" are researched by students, followed by small group research and multimedia presentations to report research results.
National Public Radio began broadcasting in 1971.
Students make predictions about the content of some of NPR's programs, then listen to the programs and report on the contents and discuss with the class.
Celebrate blues legend Robert Johnson's birthday.
Students learn about blues music and brainstorm subjects that might give them "the blues." Finally, they write their own blues lyrics and have the option to perform.
Today is Leo Lionni's birthday.
As a child growing up in Holland, Leo Lionni taught himself how to draw and later became an author and illustrator of children's books. Leo Lionni is the winner of four Caldecott awards.
Jazz and blues singer Billie Holiday was born in 1915.
Students listen to Holiday's song "Strange Fruit" and identify powerful and descriptive images for a mini-lesson on tone and about the lynchings in the South during this time.