Students compile a playlist of 10 songs representing a literary character and explain their choices based on the book's dialogue, plot, conflict, and resolution.
Playlist for Holden: Character Analysis With Music and Lyrics
What is Poetry? Contrasting Poetry and Prose
Students often find poetry frustrating and meaningless. By helping students think critically about the differences between poetry and prose, this introduction sets the stage for different strategies for comprehending poetic texts.
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.
Creating an Online Community Through Electronic Portfolios
Students publish their work in an electronic portfolio, which enables them to respond to each other's content online.
e-Book Reading and Response: Innovative Ways to Engage with Texts
Students in grades 5 through 12 read and respond to electronic books by using e-book tools and features, including digital note-taking capabilities.
Jazz Up Writing Workshop: Writing Biographies of African American Jazz Musicians
During writing workshop, students research, write, revise, and share their own comprehensive biographies of African American jazz musicians.
Rain, Ice, Steam: Using Reading to Support Inquiry About the Water Cycle
Water is always moving in a continuous cycle from liquid to solid to gas and back again. Students study this never-ending cycle through shared readings, center activities, and experiments.
When I Was Young In...A Literature to Language Experience
Past meets present in this lesson in which students practice verb tense when they write personal short stories that they then publish in a flip book.
Using Children's Literature to Develop Classroom Community
Conversation and cooperation bring out the best in students when they hold dialogues about their individual strengths, abilities, and talents.
Lonely as a Cloud: Using Poetry to Understand Similes
Students identify similes in poetry and gain experience in using similes as a poetic device in their own work.
Using Technology to Analyze and Illustrate Symbolism in Night
Images have power—they can trigger memories or symbolize abstract ideas. Students put the power of images to the test as they analyze symbolism in Night and create symbolic photomontages.
Learning About Research and Writing Using the American Revolution
Students across the board will get a kick out of researching a historical figure from the American Revolution to create an acrostic poem.
Teaching About Story Structure Using Fairy Tales
From "once upon a time" to "happily ever after," students learn to recognize story structure in fairy tales and create a logical sequence of events when writing original stories.
How-To Writing: Motivating Students to Write for a Real Purpose
It's not easy surviving fourth grade (or third or fifth)! In this lesson, students brainstorm survival tips for future fourth graders and incorporate those tips into an essay.
Delicious, Tasty, Yummy: Enriching Writing with Adjectives and Synonyms
Students thoroughly explore identifying synonyms and adjectives before using them to add variety and interest to their own writing.
Traveling the Road to Freedom Through Research and Historical Fiction
Students learn how to walk a mile in someone else's shoes by reading historical fiction about the Underground Railroad.
Lights, Camera, Action...Music: Critiquing Films Using Sight and Sound
Movie music and magic set the scene for this lesson in which students analyze a scene from Good Morning, Vietnam and then create a scene of their own.
Dancing Minds and Shouting Smiles: Teaching Personification Through Poetry
Students learn about personification by reading and discussing poems and then brainstorm nouns and verbs to create personification in their own poems.
Robert Frost Prompts the Poet in You
Students will find their inner poet laureate in this lesson that involves writing a poem in the style of Robert Frost.
Inferring How and Why Characters Change
Students will really get into character when they read short stories and analyze the how's and why's of characters' behaviors.