In this informational text, provided by CommonLit, Colin Hickey describes Jordan Messan Benissan, a musician from West Africa, and how he gets school-aged children excited about music. To support student's understanding of the themes, teachers can access guiding questions, assessment questions and discussion prompts as well as texts with similar themes literary devices, topics and writing style. This text can be paired with another informational text "Poetry Means the World to Me," by Tony Medina.

Students read and discuss literature about intolerance and diversity. They work with a partner to write two-voice poems that illustrate situations of intolerance at their school and suggest a step toward acceptance.

This interactive invites students to create original multigenre, multimodal works--one drawing and three written texts--making the tool flexible for multiple writing activities.

Students climb into the mind of a spider in this lesson that asks them to compose a spider diary using spider facts, fiction, and "faction" fiction that sounds like fact.

Students use critical literacy skills to understand the concept of perspective and to then create a diary for an animal they research with a partner.

Students won't miss a beat in this musical lesson that combines listening with personal response on a postcard.

After analyzing "Family Pictures/Cuadros de Familia" by Carmen Lomas Garza, students create a class book with artwork and information about their ancestry, traditions, and recipes, followed by a potluck lunch.

This assignment will go viral with students as they think about the meanings of words and images in public service announcements from YouTube before creating a PSA of their own.

The Mystery Cube helps students identify and summarize story elements in this popular genre. It can be used as a postreading or prewriting activity.

For this lesson, students will learn how to write a mystery. They will be given a list of Nursery Rhymes and asked to create a mystery from the Nursery Rhyme. For example, Did Humpty Dumpty really fall off the wall or was he pushed? They will create a comic from their mystery.

By exploring myths and truths surrounding Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, students think critically about commonly believed stories regarding this famous speech from the Civil War era.

In this lesson, students practice a way to communicate without words by using a glyph. They create a name card using information about themselves. Students also interpret glyphs made by others.

Students demonstrate their letter/sound knowledge by working with name cards and sharing observations about their classmates names, giving teachers an opportunity to assess knowledge in a meaningful context.

Students name unnamed chapters in a novel they are reading. They discuss possible chapter names, considering accuracy, word choice, and connotation, before settling on a choice.

Students explore naming conventions in digital and non-digital settings then choose and explain specific names and profiles to represent themselves online.

Using Beloved as a model of a work with multiple narrative perspectives, students use a visualizing activity and close reading to consider ways in which subjective values shape contradictory representations.

Using the topic of Mythology, students will work through various activities to learn the characteristics of a Narrative Essay. This particular unit will/should take place prior to writing the Narrative Essay. Many of the lessons address how to identify, create, apply and analyze point of view, theme, dialogue punctuation, argumenative qualities and citing direct and indirect evidence.

Week 20, Day 1---Day 5
Narrative Writing Unit
"This week we will be writing personal narratives using Judy Moody Saves the World to help us get ideas. Think about the narrative checklist to guide your discussion."
Narrative Checklist Sample
Narrative Graphic Organizer
Ways to establish the situation in a Narrative
Direct statement
Question
Description of snapshot in time
Words and phrases
Dialogue

Each year, Americans observe National Hispanic Heritage Month from September 15 to October 15, by celebrating the histories, cultures and contributions of American citizens whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America. This link will provide you with resources that will encourage learning about the Hispanic culture. Here you can dive deep into traditions, history and famous people who brought about change. I hope you share this with your students. Enjoy!