Based on the Guided Comprehension Model by Maureen McLaughlin and Mary Beth Allen, this lesson helps students learn three types of connections (text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-to-world) using a double-entry journal.
Guided Comprehension: Making Connections Using a Double-Entry Journal
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.
Rummaging for Fiction: Using Found Photographs and Notes to Spark Story Ideas
In this lesson, students use found notes and found photographs as inspiration to help them identify subjects, settings, characters, and conflicts for pieces of creative writing.
Polishing Preposition Skills through Poetry and Publication
Students deepen and refine their understanding of prepositions by reading Ruth Heller's Behind the Mask. They write preposition poetry and create a study guide using an online tool.
Cover to Cover: Comparing Books to Movies
Students compare and analyze novels and the movies adapted from them. They design new DVD covers and a related insert for the movies, reflecting their response to the movie version.
Analyzing Grammar Pet Peeves
By analyzing Dear Abby's "rant" about bad grammar usage, students become aware that attitudes about race, social class, moral and ethical character, and "proper" language use are intertwined.
Students as Creators: Exploring Multimedia
Students are introduced to the genre of multimedia presentations through a review and analysis of online presentations. They then apply what they have learned to create their own multimedia presentations.
Gaining Background for the Graphic Novel Persepolis: A WebQuest on Iran
To prepare students for reading the graphic novel Persepolis, this lesson uses a WebQuest to focus students' research on finding reliable information about Iran before and during the Islamic Revolution.
It's My Life: Multimodal Autobiography Project
Students express themselves verbally, visually, and musically by creating multimodal autobiographies, exchanging ideas with other students and sharing important events in their lives through PowerPoint presentations.
Connecting Past and Present: A Local Research Project
In this unit, students become active archivists, gathering photos, artifacts, and stories for a museum exhibit that highlights one decade in their school's history.
The Children's Picture Book Project
In this lesson students evaluate published children's picture storybooks. Students then plan, write, illustrate, and publish their own children's picture books.
Love of War in Tim O'Brien's "How to Tell a True War Story"
Students explore the theme of love of war through texts on camaraderie among soldiers. They then compose a visual collage depicting their beliefs about the relationship between love and war.
Assessing Cultural Relevance: Exploring Personal Connections to a Text
As a class, students evaluate a nonfiction or realistic fiction text for its cultural relevance to themselves personally and as a group.
Making It Visual for ELL Students: Teaching History Using Maus
Spark the engagement of English-language learners or reluctant readers with the graphic novel Maus. The visual information provided by the genre serves as a support for reading and critical engagement.
Creating a Persuasive Podcast
Students learn how to get their voice out on the web when they research issues important to them and compose a persuasive podcast to post online.
BOOKMATCH: Scaffolding Independent Book Selection
This lesson will be turning heads and pages as students learn how to choose appropriate books for independent reading exercises and later evaluate their choices.