This lesson provides ideas for celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr. Day by encouraging students to explore the connections between Dr. King and themselves through journaling and inquiry-based research.
Martin Luther King, Jr. and Me: Identifying with a Hero
A Recipe for Writing: Fairy Tale Feasts
After examining recipes written based on students' favorite fairy tales, students research a recipe related to their favorite story, book, or fairy tale and include it in a classroom recipe book.
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.
Writing Acrostic Poems with Thematically Related Texts in the Content Areas
Students read thematically related texts, scaffolded from simple to complex, to help them gather necessary concept vocabulary and background knowledge in a content area. They then write acrostic poems to organize and present their learning in a creative way.
Myth and Truth: Independence Day
By exploring myths and truths surrounding Independence Day, students think critically about commonly believed stories regarding the beginning of the Revolutionary War and the Independence Day holiday.
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.
Teaching with Zooming Slideshows through Prezi
Through Prezi, a web application, students create "zooming" presentations for various purposes, such as presenting research, defending an opinion, or sharing a digital story.
Bringing Lessons to Life with Animoto
Using Animoto, a free Web 2.0 tool, students can develop short digital videos that include music, photos, video clips, and text as well as share their creations electronically.
Speak to Me: Teaching with Voki
Through Voki, a Web 2.0 tool, students create customizable avatars for class presentations for various purposes, such as presenting biographical information, expressing an opinion, or reading a poem.
Exploring Disability Using Multimedia and the B-D-A Reading Strategy
History takes on new dimensions in this interactive multimedia lesson that emphasizes the B-D-A approach to research as students investigate the experiences of people with disabilities since the early 1800s.
Let's Build a Snowman
In this lesson, students use both fiction and nonfiction texts, the Internet, and a K-W-L chart to learn about how animals survive the winter.
Let It Grow: An Inquiry-Based Organic Gardening Research Project
Students learn about organic gardening by developing their own research questions, conducting research, gardening at their school, creating signs about their plants, and presenting their research to the class.
A Race With Grace: Sports Poetry in Motion
In this lesson, athletics, aesthetics, and poetics intersect in new ways as developing literacy learners experiment together with the forms of language.
Jackie Robinson was born on this day in 1919.
Students read messages sent to the White House from Jackie Robinson and discuss his role as an athlete and a civil rights activist, as well as the role of athletes in society.
Today is the birthday of Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland.
After reading one of Carroll's chapters, students plan an unbirthday party and do activities and preparation for the event.
It's Independence Day! Or is it?
Students consider why there are so many different dates associated with the Declaration of Independence and why the nation's birthday is celebrated on July 4.
Celebrate Juneteenth!
Students use the Venn Diagram to compare Juneteenth celebrations to Fourth of July celebrations and hypothesize about the differences.
James Naismith, inventor of the game of basketball, was born in 1861.
Students look at Naismith's original 13 rules for basketball and write about the rules and how they have changed in small groups.
Explore and Write About Nature
In this activity, children look closely at living things in their natural environments and then make books about what they see.
Amazing Biographies: Writing About People Who Change the World
After reading about historical figures and other important people that have changed the world, children choose someone that they consider to be "amazing"—either someone they've heard about or someone they know—and create a book page that highlights this person.