Students tell their life stories in this lesson about autobiographies based on family photographs.
Telling a Story About Me: Young Children Write Autobiographies
Behind the Masks: Exploring Culture Through Art and Poetry
Students research mask-making from various cultures, highlight the masks' connections to cultural practices, compose poetry to reveal their understanding, analyze their own culture, and create personal masks and poetry.
Applying Question-Answer Relationships to Pictures
A picture is worth a thousand words as students are guided in viewing wordless picture books and responding to four different types of questions about the images they see.
Pourquoi Stories: Creating Tales to Tell Why
Where did the stars come from? What makes lightning and thunder? Pourquoi tales are narratives developed by various cultures around the world to explain natural phenomena. Students study three tales and learn about their cultures of origin, then work cooperatively to write and present an original pourquoi tale.
Timelines and Texts: Motivating Students to Read Nonfiction
In an effort to help motivate students to read nonfiction, students are challenged to use a timeline to help them name the year when certain products were invented.
Phonics In Context
Use an engaging, authentic text to build students' knowledge of phonic elements and give them a taste of Japanese culture.
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.
Show What You Know: Read, Write and Solve Math Problems
Informational texts, iPads, and interactive games, oh, my! Help students journey through multimodal texts to identify and solve real-world mathematics problems using writing and apps.
Reading Movies and TV: Learning the "Language" of Moving-Image Texts
Introduce students to the idea that movies and TV have their own language and grammar, which gives them special ways of telling their stories.
Finding Solutions to Food Waste: Persuasion in a Digital World
Using various reading strategies and resources, students explore the issue of food waste. They also create persuasive arguments and blog posts examining this topic.
Inspire Healthful Reading Using Unconventional Texts
This minilesson encourages children to seek out and appropriately react to nutrition labels and to make healthy food choices, integrating science, math, health, and literacy.
Resumes and Cover Letters for High School Students
High school students are taught how to use resumes and cover letters to highlight their skills and make them stand out, whether applying to college or for a job.
A Portrait of Our World: Making Connections and Developing Comprehension
Students engage in carousel walks, character analyses, global explorations, and genre studies while using valuable language arts strategies to build higher-level comprehension skills.
Engineering the Perfect Poem by Using the Vocabulary of STEM
Students research engineering careers and create poetry to understand the vocabulary of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics).
3-2-1 Vocabulary: Learning Filmmaking Vocabulary by Making Films
Bring the vocabulary of film to life through the processes of filmmaking. Students learn terminology and techniques simultaneously as they plan, film, and edit a short video.
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.
Using American Sign Language to Improve Comprehension and Vocabulary
American Sign Language is combined with the hilarious poetry and pictures of Sam's Sandwich, a lift-the-flap book, to engage all types of learners in acquiring key vocabulary.
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 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.
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.