Imagination and application are key to this tall tale lesson in which students take what they know about tall tales to spin a yarn of their own.
Thundering Tall Tales: Using Read-Aloud as a Springboard to Writing
Artistic Elements: Exploring Art Through Descriptive Writing
Paint a vivid picture in your reader's mind with good descriptive writing! Artwork provides the perfect starting point for practicing descriptive writing that conveys color, shape, line, and mood.
Creative Communication Frames: Discovering Similarities between Writing and Art
Graphic organizers assist the development of comparative vocabulary and generate discussions of analogy and metaphor in art as students go on a real or virtual tour of an art gallery.
Blogging in the Primary Grades? Yes, Indeed!
Give students an authentic reason to read and write by researching blogs written by their peers around the world and then writing their own.
Awareness of Alliteration: Enhancing Writing Through Mentor Texts
Through this lesson, primary students strengthen their phonemic awareness while using picture books featuring alliteration as models for their own writing.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Alliteration All Around
Students learn about alliteration, and then practice using alliteration in acrostic poems, tongue twisters, alphabet books, and number books.
The Connection Between Poetry and Music
Students won't miss a beat in this reading fluency lesson that combines music and poetry.
Building Classroom Community Through the Exploration of Acrostic Poetry
What do your students think about each other? Find out as you teach them the concepts of acrostic poems and challenge them to write an uplifting acrostic about a classmate.
Review Redux: Introducing Literary Criticism Through Reception Moments
Literature takes on a life of its own as students take a hands-on approach to exploring A Raisin in the Sun for cultural and historical context.
And the Question Is... Writing Good Survey Questions
There's no question that students will be able to compose good survey questions by the end of this lesson.
Poetry Circles: Generative Writing Loops Help Students Craft Verse
Students put their heads together in a poetry circle to learn and practice different forms of poetry.
Reading, Writing, Haiku Hiking! A Class Book of Picturesque Poems
Students learn haiku
write descriptive poems
and share with the class.
Using Greeting Cards to Motivate Students and Enhance Literacy Skills
Imagination and illustration are the key in this lesson in which students read and create their own greeting cards.
The Magnetism of Language: Parts of Speech, Poetry, and Word Play
What wonderful ways words work! The parts of speech are the highlight of this lesson in which students identify parts of speech in a nonsensical poem and then create their own wild and wacky rhymes.