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.
All's Well that Sells Well: A Creative Introduction to Shakespeare
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.
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.
Plotting a Plan to Improve Writing: Using Plot Scaffolds
Students really get into character in this lesson as they act out the parts of a script and analyze character motivations and dialogue.
To, Too, or Two: Developing an Understanding of Homophones
The classroom becomes a stage in this interactive lesson in which students sing, act, and design comic strips to learn the meanings and spellings of common homophones.
Using Word Webs to Teach Synonyms for Commonly Used Words
Students use word webs to choose synonyms for generic adjectives and to learn to adjust their word usage for different contexts.
The Peace Journey: Using Process Drama in the Classroom
What does peace mean to you? In this lesson, students attempt to answer this question as they write and perform a short skit that reflects their ideas of peace.
Readers Theatre With Jan Brett
Students in grades 1-2 use Jan Brett's Hedgie's Surprise for a Readers Theatre experience.
A High-Interest Novel Helps Struggling Readers Confront Bullying in Schools
Students read a work of realistic fiction about bullying and gain understanding through writing, Readers Theatre, and discussion.
Exploring the Subtext Strategy: Thinking Beyond the Text
What is it like to have a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day? Students find out in this lesson in which they "become" the characters in Judith Viorst's book.
Choosing, Chatting, and Collecting: Vocabulary Self-Collection Strategy
Students identify interesting words from Shakespeare's plays and add them to a classroom vocabulary collection.
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.
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.
Rain, Ice, Steam: Using Reading to Support Inquiry About the Water Cycle
Water is always moving in a continuous cycle from liquid to solid to gas and back again. Students study this never-ending cycle through shared readings, center activities, and experiments.
Becoming History Detectives Using Shakespeare's Secret
Is the case closed on the authorship of Shakespeare's plays? Student history detectives explore the evidence for and against one of the possible alternatives, Edward deVere, using the novel Shakespeare's Secret plus a variety of online sources.
Developing Story Structure With Paper-Bag Skits
Lights, camera, action, and a bit of mystery! In this lesson, students use mystery props in a skit bag to create and perform in short, impromptu skits.
Writing a Movie: Summarizing and Rereading a Film Script
Lights! Camera! Action! In this lesson, students view a scene with no dialogue from E.T., write a script for that scene, and perform a dramatic reading while the scene plays.
History Comes Alive: Developing Fluency and Comprehension Using Social Studies
Let the power of imagination and inference serve as a "time machine" to bring Benjamin Franklin into the classroom! History and science come to life in a dialogue with Franklin the inventor, developed through lesson activities that incorporate research, imagination, writing, visual arts, and drama.
Pairing Fiction With Poetry and Performance
Make connections across genres and across cultures to engage students in the study of literary voice and themes. Comprehension skills and vocabulary also come into play, especially for English language learners, as students read a novel and related poems, then write and perform original poems related to the novel.
Media Literacy: Examining the World of Television Teens
Pop culture and the classroom collide in this lesson when students go behind the scenes to analyze a television series for characterization to use in an original television show proposal.