Students read and analyze fairy tales, identifying their common elements. They then write their own "fractured" fairy tales by changing one of the literary elements found in the original.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
A read-aloud of Patricia Polacco's "Thank You, Mr. Falker" helps promote deeper comprehension through questioning to achieve personal connections and discussions of character and theme.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
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.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Multidimensional, challenging, and popular with students, comics provide an excellent way to introduce the concept of genres.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Students work together to create classroom rules by brainstorming why they are at school and what they need while they are there.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Following the traditional form of the haiku, students publish their own haikus using Animoto, an online web tool that creates slideshows that blend text and music.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
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.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Comic frames are traditionally used to illustrate a story in a short, concise format. In this lesson, students use a six-paneled comic strip frame to create a story map, summarizing a book or story that they've read. Each panel retells a particular detail or explains a literary element (such as setting or character) from the story.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Students use a text set to increase understanding of content area material and demonstrate what they have learned by writing an original piece that blends together narrative and expository elements.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
After students have read a book about the Holocaust, such as "The Diary of Anne Frank" or "Night" by Elie Wiesel, students will view "Life is Beautiful" and complete discussion questions to challenge their ability to analyze literature using film.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Using picture books as mentor texts, students learn effective strategies for organizing information that compares and contrasts. Students can then apply appropriate organizational strategies to their own papers.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Students interview family members, and then create graphic family timelines based on important and memorable family events.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Students identify the elements of fiction in a book they have read and share summaries of them by writing and illustrating their own mini-book.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Students will develop their summarizing skills while learning about local history. They will learn to consider audience while selecting topics, conducting research and interviews, and writing historical markers for their town.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Start the presses! Catchy titles, eye-popping graphics, and attractive fonts are all on students agendas in this lesson as they create magazine covers to summarize a topic.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Savagery, treachery, lost innocenceÉ "Lord of the Flies" is rife with character development. Use this lesson to help students chart the character changes of Ralph and Jack, both in groups and individually.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Students become online authors in this lesson in which they write and post a short story using wiki technology.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Students use fractured fairy tales to practice revision and editing as separate activities when they write their own versions of fairy tales.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Students engage in a brief writing assignment that concretely illustrates how language and gender stereotyping interact causally.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Following the model of N. Scott Momaday's The Way To Rainy Mountain, students write three-voice narratives based on Kiowa folktales, an interview with an Elder, and personal connections to theme.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
