In this lesson students explore a number of sources to create a biographical timeline about a selected person. Students collaboratively research and resolve conflicting information they find during their investigation.
Biographies: Creating Timelines of a Life
Memories Matter: The Giver and Descriptive Writing Memoirs
Using The Giver, students discuss the importance recorded history. This provides context for descriptive writing of students' own history in a lesson that integrates personal writing, research, and literary response.
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.
Technology and Copyright Law: A "Futurespective"
Students research and report on instances of how copyright laws have adapted to encompass new technologies. They write articles predicting copyright issues that may arise with new and future technologies.
Copyright Law: From Digital Reprints to Downloads
Students investigate how and why copyright law has changed over time, and apply this information to recent copyright issues, creating persuasive arguments based on the perspective of a particular group.
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.
Worth Its Weight: Letter Writing with "The Things They Carried"
This lesson uses a letter-writing activity based on Tim O'Brien's story "The Things They Carried" to build empathy as students examine the weight they symbolically carry in their own lives.
Bio-graph: Graphing Life Events
Students interview other students, choose significant life events, rate them, graph them, and write about one or more, in this activity that integrates mathematical graphing with writing.
Reaching Across Time: Scaffolded Engagements With a 19th-Century Text
Students in the 21st century need to build background knowledge and fill in textual gaps to enter the unfamiliar world of "Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street."
Cultural Connections and Writing for Change
A little understanding can go a long way. After learning about difficulties that Palestinian youths face, students will write a letter to an official discussing these issues.
What Are My Rights? Exploring and Writing About the Constitution
Students speak up in this lesson about rights, examining the Constitution in the context of issues that affect their everyday lives.
In the Style of Ernie Pyle: Reporting on World War II
Students will think this lesson should make the headlines when they finish researching Ernie Pyle's work in preparation for writing their own news articles.
Pictures Tell the Story: Improving Comprehension With Persepolis
Students get the big picture of the Middle East when they read and analyze Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel Persepolis.
ABC Bookmaking Builds Vocabulary in the Content Areas
V is for vocabulary. A content area unit provides the theme for a specialized ABC book, as students select, research, define, and illustrate a word for each alphabet letter.
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.
A Harlem Renaissance Retrospective: Connecting Art, Music, Dance, and Poetry
Students research, evaluate, and synthesize information about the Harlem Renaissance from varied resources, create an exhibit, and highlight connections across disciplines (i.e., art, music, and poetry) using a Venn diagram.
Wartime Poetry: Working With Similes
Students analyze a photograph, brainstorm words to describe the characters' senses and feelings, work in pairs to describe a character's experience, and create a poem using their ideas and similes.
Guided Comprehension: Self-Questioning Using Question-Answer Relationships
Guided comprehension moves your students beyond decoding to become independent readers. Generating questions to guide reading helps readers make connections with the text and supports independent comprehension of new texts.