Through a series of picture book read-alouds, students engage in critical discussion of complex issues of race, class, and gender.
Breaking Barriers, Building Bridges: Critical Discussion of Social Issues
Grades
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Who's Got Mail? Using Literature to Promote Authentic Letter Writing
3 - 5
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Students discuss and chart letter elements and write their own letters to adults at school, reinforcing letter-writing skills beyond the classroom lesson.
Grades
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Growing Readers and Writers with Help from Mother Goose
K
Lesson Plan
| Recurring Lesson
Watch Mother Goose work her magic! This lesson uses nursery rhymes to help emergent readers remember the letters and their sounds and identify word chunks.
Grades
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Family Message Journals Teach Many Purposes for Writing
K - 2
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
This lesson encourages children to explore authentic reasons for writing by writing messages to their family in a family message journal.
Grades
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Alliteration in Headline Poems
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Minilesson
Students will be introduced to the term alliteration and create a headline poem consisting of 25 words that contain at least three examples of alliteration.
Grades
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She Did What? Revising for Connotation
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Minilesson
Did she walk, skip, amble, dance? In this minilesson, students explore connotation by acting out and revising the simple sentence "She walked into the room."
Grades
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Launching Family Message Journals
K - 2
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
This lesson introduces Family Message Journalsa teacher-tested tool for encouraging family involvement and supporting writing to reflect and to learn.
Grades
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Avalanche, Aztek, or Bravada? A Connotation Minilesson
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Minilesson
Students examine familiar car names for underlying connotations then proceed through a series of steps, increasing their control over language, until they select words with powerful connotations in their own writing.
Grades
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Graphic Life Map
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
In this autobiographical prewriting activity, students brainstorm important memories, choose graphics to represent these memories, and then rank the events as low or high points in their lives.
Grades
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Writing Reports in Kindergarten? Yes!
K
Lesson Plan
| Unit
This lesson encourages young students to see themselves as writers with a message to convey. Three types of reports are provided to show what kindergartners and emergent writers can do.
Grades
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Using Repetition and Picture Cues to Foster Independent Young Readers
K
Lesson Plan
| Minilesson
Kindergartners share their knowledge of letters and sounds in a large group setting, giving teachers an assessment opportunity. Each student contributes a page to make a repetitive classroom book.
Grades
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BioBags: Linking Literature and Life
3 - 5
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Students create BioBags, a collection of texts that mark special times in their lives. BioBags provide a way for students to share a variety of events and texts.
Grades
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Blogging With Photovoice: Sharing Pictures in an Integrated Classroom
9 - 12
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Make the most of your students' diverse ability levels and experience with a prewriting activity in which they describe an abstract idea using blogging and photographs that they have taken.
Grades
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Using Pictures to Build Schema for Social Studies Content
3 - 5
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
How do you read an image? Students find out in this lesson in which they "read" several images of the Boston Massacre to better understand the event and recognize effects of propaganda.
Grades
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The Magnetism of Language: Parts of Speech, Poetry, and Word Play
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
What wonderful ways words work! The parts of speech are the highlight of this lesson in which students identify parts of speech in a nonsensical poem and then create their own wild and wacky rhymes.
Grades
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A World of Readers: Libraries Around the World
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Bookworms will enjoy the bytes they find in this lesson as they research and share information about online library services in places around the world.
Grades
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The Mysteries of Memory: Memorization Techniques That Work
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Students learn techniques that can aid in memorizing information, play online memory games, and participate in a class memory game to develop and share their own memory strategies.
Grades
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Shared Experiences, Individual Impressions: Buddies Create PowerPoint Stories
K - 2
Lesson Plan
| Recurring Lesson
Stories and snapshots of school-related experiences are the perfect sources of inspiration for students as they create PowerPoint presentations with the help of an older student.
Grades
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Developing Searching, Skimming, and Scanning Skills With Internet Bingo
4 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Student pairs aim to be the first team to call out "bingo" in this lesson in which they use skimming and scanning to locate information about ancient Greece and Rome.
Grades
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Comparing a Literary Work to Its Film Interpretation
9 - 12
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Students will really get into the swing of things as they analyze the text and film versions of Edgar Allan Poe's story, "The Pit and the Pendulum."