Through a series of picture book read-alouds, students engage in critical discussion of complex issues of race, class, and gender.
Breaking Barriers, Building Bridges: Critical Discussion of Social Issues
Avalanche, Aztek, or Bravada? A Connotation Minilesson
Students examine familiar car names for underlying connotations then proceed through a series of steps, increasing their control over language, until they select words with powerful connotations in their own writing.
Native Americans Today
This lesson challenges students' views of Native Americans as a vanished people by asking them to compare their prior knowledge with information they gather while reading about contemporary Native Americans.
Literature Circles: Getting Started
Students practice different ways of collaborating to read a work of literature. They work in different roles as they compose and answer questions, discover new vocabulary, and examine literary elements.
Listen, Look, and Learn: An Information-Gathering Process
After listening to and discussing the story Score One for the Sloths, primary students research the sloth. Students use a variety of resources, including an information wheel graphic organizer.
Swish! Pow! Whack! Teaching Onomatopoeia Through Sports Poetry
Students explore poetry about sports, looking closely at the use of onomatopoeia. After viewing a segment of a sporting event, students create their own onomatopoeic sports poems.
Constructing New Understanding Through Choral Readings of Shakespeare
After reading The Tempest or any other play by William Shakespeare, students work in small groups to plan, compose, and perform a choral reading based on a character or theme.
All's Well that Sells Well: A Creative Introduction to Shakespeare
Students compare attending a performance at The Globe Theater with attending a modern theater production or movie. They then create a commercial for an Elizabethan audience promoting a modern product.
The Ten-Minute Play: Encouraging Original Response to Challenging Texts
Students use both analytical and creative skills to adapt passages from a novel with significant internal dialogue and conflict, such as Toni Morrison's Beloved, into a ten-minute play.
Weekly Writer's Blogs: Building a Reflective Community of Support
Students explore the conventions of blog writing while using it to self-reflect on their writing and communicate with classmates about each other's reflections.
Persuading Readers with Endorsement Letters
Students explore the genre of commercial endorsements, establishing characteristics and requirements for the genre. Each student then composes an endorsement of a product, service, company, or industry.
Help Wanted: Writing Professional Resumes
Students will create a beginning resume that represents their current work experience and demonstrates their knowledge of rhetorical situations for professional writing.