To prepare for literature circles featuring historical novels, students research the decades of the 1930s to the 1990s and share their information using Prezi, a web application for creating multimedia presentations.
Blending the Past with Today's Technology: Using Prezi to Prepare for Historical Fiction
Animate that Haiku!
Following the traditional form of the haiku, students publish their own haikus using Animoto, an online web tool to produce slideshows that blend text and music.
Experiencing Haiku Through Mindfulness, Movement & Music
By being present and mindful on nature walks, students write haiku using vivid sensory language; and explore body movement, music and art as visual and kinesthetic representations of their poetry.
Book Report Alternative: Glog That Book!
In this alternative book report, students identify the elements of fiction in books they have read by creating glogs, interactive multimedia posters, and then share their glogs.
Responding to Tragedy: Then and Now
After reading several poets' personal responses to the September 11th terrorist attacks, students write a "then and now" poem that puts their early memories of the event in conversation with their current understanding of and response to the tragedy.
Storyboarding the Transformation from Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde
Students imagine and storyboard their own vision of the transformation of Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde and then evaluate movie portrayals.
Designing Elements of Story in Little Blue and Little Yellow
In this series of four lessons, students will explore key elements of design in Little Blue and
Little Yellow to learn about setting, character relationships, and plot.
Audience & Purpose: Evaluating Disney's Changes to the Hercules Myth
What drives changes to classic myths and fables? In this lesson students evaluate the changes Disney made to the myth of "Hercules" in order to achieve their audience and purpose.
Active Reading through Self-Assessment: The Student-Made Quiz
This recurring lesson encourages students to comprehend their reading through inquiry and collaboration. They choose important quotations from the text and work in groups to formulate "quiz" questions that their peers will answer.
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.
Analyzing the Rhetoric of Corporate Logos across Time
Students think critically about how design elements in logos work together to tell a changing story about a company or product in this visual rhetoric lesson.
Comparing William Carlos Williams's Poetry with Cubist Paintings
Through discussion, drawing, and writing, students compare how William Carlos Williams's poetry and Cubist and Precisionist painting employ similar artistic strategies, enhancing their understanding of both kinds of 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.
Exploring Perspectives on Desegregation Using Brown Girl Dreaming
Students read and discuss a selection of poems from Jacqueline Woodson's Brown Girl Dreaming to explore varying views on the process of desegregation in America.
Examining History with Maya Angelou's Poetry
To understand the historical background that influenced Maya Angelou's poems, students research events to produce trading cards using the ReadWriteThink Trading Card Student Interactive. Through the sharing of these trading cards, students understand the historical background as they analyze Angelou's poetry.
Aim for the Heart: Using Haiku to Identify Theme
Using haiku, students focus on themes in literature and demonstrate their understanding of an author's message. Writing haiku to accompany an analytical paper hones analytical skills and fosters creative expression.
Summarizing with Haikus
Using the Haiku Poem App or the Haiku Poem Interactive, students summarize papers they have written using the traditional format of a haiku.
Learning about Clouds with Haikus
Using a mobile app or Interactive activity, students write haikus describing various types of clouds that they have studied.
Developing Aesthetic Criteria: Using Music to Move Beyond Like/Dislike with Poetry
In this lesson, students develop the cognitive tool of criteria development for discussing the aesthetics of poetry and music.
What Am I? Teaching Poetry through Riddles
Students explore figurative language in poetry by reading and writing riddle poems.