Working as career counselors for a literary character, students find a job for the character, prepare a resume, and design questions and answers to prepare them for a job interview.
Preparing a Character for a New Job: Character Analysis through Job Placement
Book Report Alternative: Creating Careers for Characters
Students select a job listing for a character in a book they have read, then create a resume and application letter for that character.
Teaching the Epic through Ghost Stories
In this lesson, students connect to the oral tradition of epic storytellers by sharing their own oral tales of ghosts and goblins and monsters.
Book Report Alternative: Characters for Hire! Studying Character in Drama
In this alternative to the traditional book report, students respond to a play they have read by creating a resume for one of its characters.
Book Report Alternative: Getting Acquainted with Farcebook
In this alternative to the traditional book report, students report on their novel choices using Facebook-like pages.
Literature Response in Primary Classrooms
This step-by-step literature response template for use with read-alouds asks students to use drawing and writing to respond to increasingly-complex prompts which address literary elements as well as personal connections.
Boars and Baseball: Making Connections
In this lesson, students will make text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections after reading In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson. After sharing and discussing connections, students choose and plan a project that makes a personal connection to the text.
Trading Card Creator
This tool provides a fun and useful way to explore a variety of topics such as a character in a book, a person or place from history, or even a physical object. An excellent tool to for summarizing or as a prewriting exercise for original stories.
Power of Picture Books, The: Using Content Area Literature in Middle School
Featuring descriptions and activities for fifty exceptional titles, Mary Jo Fresch and Peggy Harkins offer a wealth of ideas for harnessing the power of picture books to improve reading and writing in the content areas.
Connection Web
Students use this printout to expand on connections they have made to a text and use those details to write essays or create projects about the text.
Supporting Comprehension Strategies for English Language Learners
This Strategy Guide is for developing comprehension that incorporates the gradual release of responsibility model.
Language Learners in the English Classroom
This book provides practical, research-based strategies that can help secondary-level English language learners meet the challenges of both language and content learning.
Exchanging Ideas by Sharing Journals: Interactive Response in the Classroom
Pairs of students respond to literature alternately in shared journals. Mini-lessons are presented on responding to prompts, creating dialogue, adding drawings, and asking and answering questions.
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.