Students improve their reading fluency by selecting a poem online to perform in class.
Poetry: A Feast to Form Fluent Readers
Word Recognition Strategies Using Nursery Rhymes
Whether you sing or recite familiar nursery rhymes in this standard lesson, students will learn how to create and categorize words that have similar endings.
The Frog Beyond the Fairy Tale Character: Searching Informational Texts
Frogs often appear as the main character in fiction stories, but what do students really know about frogs? Students find out in this lesson in which they research real-life frogs.
Story Map
The Story Map interactive is designed to assist students in prewriting and postreading activities by focusing on the key elements of character, setting, conflict, and resolution.
Word Mover
Word Mover allows children and teens to create "found poetry" by choosing from word banks and existing famous works; additionally, users can add new words to create a piece of poetry by moving/manipulating the text.
Word Matrix
Explore the similarities and differences among words typically considered synonyms with this tool that allows middle- and secondary-level students organize groups of words by connotation on one axis and by register on another.
Profile Publisher
Students use the Profile Publisher to draft online social networking profiles, yearbook profiles, and newspaper or magazine profiles for themselves, other real or fictional characters.
CD/DVD Cover Creator
The CD/DVD Cover Creator allows users to type and illustrate CD and DVD covers and related booklets for liner notes and other information. Students can use the tool to create covers for books, music, and films that they explored as well as to create covers for media they compose individually or as a class.
Postcard Creator
The Postcard Creator helps students learn to identify all the typical parts of a postcard, and then generate their own postcard messages by typing information into letter templates. After printing their texts, students can illustrate the front of their postcards in a variety of ways, including drawing, collage, and stickers.
Book Cover Creator
The Book Cover Creator is designed to allow users to type and illustrate front book covers, front and back covers, and full dust jackets. Students can use the tool to create new covers for books that they read as well as to create covers for books they write individually or as a class.
Flip Book
The Flip Book is designed to allow users to type and illustrate tabbed flip books up to ten pages long. Students and teachers can use the flip book for taking notes while reading, making picture books, collecting facts, or creating question and answer booklets.
Today is World Read Aloud Day.
Students celebrate the power of words by reading aloud to their classmates and spreading the word of global literacy to their friends and family.
Poet and author Pat Mora was born on this day in 1942.
Students study and write extended metaphors through the use of Pat Mora's book.
The "1984" Macintosh commercial aired today during Super Bowl XVIII.
Original advertisements are created after students review advertising techniques they've studied.
Seamus Heaney was born on this day in 1939.
Students focus on the figurative language in Heaney's poem, "Digging," and discuss the speaker's attitude, and how metaphor, simile, and image contribute to the poem.
Jonathan Swift was born on this day in 1667.
Students explore satire and parody in television and film, advertising, and journalism and create a display that highlights their findings.
The Scarlet Letter was published in 1850.
Students brainstorm the possible meaning of the title The Scarlet Letter and what its significance might be. The class' responses are returned to once the reading has begun to see how their definitions have changed.
Poet Robert Frost was born in 1874.
Students celebrate Frost's birthday by exploring his innovation in the sonnet form by studying poems and presenting them to the class.
The Barbie doll was unveiled in 1959.
Students explore body image and advertising through an activity where they bring in pictures from magazines that they read and discuss gender representations in the media.
Today is St. Patrick's Day.
St. Patrick's Day is celebrated by reading Irish folk tales and using the Story Cube tool to create a graphic organizer and see what characteristics are unique to Irish tales.