In this lesson, students develop the cognitive tool of criteria development for discussing the aesthetics of poetry and music.
Developing Aesthetic Criteria: Using Music to Move Beyond Like/Dislike with Poetry
Grades
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Using Mobile Devices to Illustrate Literary Devices
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Using mobile devices, students capture images to represent literary devices. Students then reflect on why their images depict the literary devices.
Grades
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Action Is Character: Exploring Character Traits with Adjectives
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Students must "become" a character in a novel in order to describe themselves and other characters using powerful adjectives.
Grades
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Become a Character: Adjectives, Character Traits, and Perspective
9 - 12
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Students "become" one of the major characters in a book and describe themselves and other characters, using lists of accurate, powerful adjectives.
Grades
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Teaching Voice with Anthony Browne's Voices in the Park
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Students analyze Voices in the Park by Anthony Browne to determine how an author keeps an audience interested by creating voice and to applying that knowledge to their own writing.
Grades
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Book Report Alternative: Character and Author Business Cards
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Students respond to a book they have read by thinking symbolically to create a business card for one of the characters.
Grades
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Book Report Alternative: The Elements of Fiction
3 - 5
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Students identify the elements of fiction in a book they have read and share summaries of them by writing and illustrating their own mini-book.
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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Book Report Alternative: Summary, Symbol, and Analysis in Bookmarks
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Students make bookmarks on computers and share their ideas with other readers at their school, while practicing summarizing, recognizing symbols, and writing reviews—all for an authentic audience.
Grades
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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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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
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Using Picture Books to Teach Characterization in Writing Workshop
3 - 5
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Students explore character development through experiences with picture books. They learn about the connections between reading and writing and apply the information they learn to revisions of their own writing.
Grades
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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
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Writing a Flashback and Flash-Forward Story Using Movies and Texts as Models
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Using the film The Sandlot, students are introduced to the literary devices of flashbacks and flash-forwards. They then write their own stories using those devices.
Grades
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Daily Book Boosts
3 - 5
Lesson Plan
| Recurring Lesson
Book Boostsone-minute raves at the end of independent reading timeare easy ways to suggest new titles to students, and they act as a way for students to have something to think about as they read.
Grades
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Story Character Homepage
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Unit
Students analyze personal homepages, as well as a character in a book they have read, and then create a homepage for the character.