Virginia Department of Education
Maintaining Organization, Clarity, Central Idea, and Unity
Introduce and challenge the essay organization skills of your junior high writers with the paper reconstruction activity in this demonstration. Theydetermine what the word organization means, and discover the basic organizational...
Curated OER
Monomyth Graphic Organizer
Track and explore how the classical concept of the hero's quest is developed in multiple works of literature with a clean and simple graphic organizer. Young readers can fill in the name of any book, movie, or myth and then track their...
Curated OER
The Eight Hero Archetypes
The Chief, the Bad Boy, the Best Friend, the Charmer, the Lost Soul, the Professor, the Swashbuckler, the Warrior. After examining the criteria for each of these archetypes, viewers are ask to generate a list of their own examples of...
Curated OER
Animal Farm Chapter 3 Discussion Notes and Mini-Project
Created for a 10th grade English classroom studying George Orwell's Animal Farm, this mini-project promotes exploration of character and plot. In the first section, young readers are required to characterize one character from the story,...
Curated OER
Mirrors & Windows: Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use”
“Mirrors” or aspects from a story that reflect a personal text-to-self connection, and “windows,” an aspect that gives insight into a different way of being, are the focus of an activity designed for Alice Walker’s story. Readers select...
Curated OER
Moby Dick Puppetry
Such an ambitious lesson! Third graders with special needs listen to an audio recording of the novel, Moby Dick. They stop often to discuss each of the main characters and analyze their actions in the story. They then make puppets of one...
Curated OER
Reading Comprehension Strategy: Using Background Knowledge
The value of this presentation is that it not only defines background knowledge but includes exercises that show readers how to activate and use what they already know about a topic to make text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world...
PBS
Blue Ribbon Readers: Determining Important Ideas
Brenda Z. Guiberson’s nonfiction book, Cactus Hotel, launches a series of activities that model for readers how to determine the main idea in a passage. Class members engage in an online interactive game to test their understanding. The...
PBS
Blue Ribbon Readers: Questioning
Model for your class how to become a better reader through questioning. After conducting a picture walk that introduces prediction strategies, learners play an interactive questioning cube game. Complete directions for the game and...
Hawaiʻi State Department of Education
Sequence of Events
Are you in need of a new way to teach learners sequence of events and how to interpret a character's external motivations? Why not engage them in dramatic play? The class will use tableaux to convey the sequence of events in a familiar...
Hawaiʻi State Department of Education
Story Design
Stories contain very specific elements; plot, characters, and key events. Learners use pantomime to retell a key event from the beginning, middle, and end of a story. They discuss setting and character as each group discusses and then...
Hawaiʻi State Department of Education
Finding the Main Idea
You can mix almost any subject with an arts curriculum. Find out how to use drama to find the main idea of a literary text. You'll read a story, and then learners will make tableaus showing what happened, or what they think will happen...
Hawaiʻi State Department of Education
Crow Boy
There is a difference between actions, motives, and the appearance of a character in a narrative text. Fourth graders explore character analysis through the dramatic arts. They create a series of movements, tableaus, and pantomimes to...
San Francisco Symphony
Biographical Slideshow
Biographies can be a fun topic for any history project. Learners choose one famous person that lived between 1865 and 1930 to research. They gather information, work on reading comprehension, and use what they find to create slide shows...
Eye On Education
I Say Tomato, You Say To-Mah-To
Turn your junior high talkers into effective arguers. Introduce these budding lawyers to skills that show how to support a claim, decide what clear reason is, and how to use evidence to support an argument. Time is scheduled for class...
Curated OER
Mozart vs. Beethoven - Real Classical Composers
Elementary schoolers are given an overview of the baroque, classical, romantic, and modern periods of music. They focus on the lives of Beethoven and Mozart; two of the greatest composers of all time. After listening to samples their...
Hawaiʻi State Department of Education
Cinderella
Reading fairy tales is so much fun! Learners use dramatic play to assist them in defining and expressing the main theme found in the story of Cinderella. Each group is given a story card and will create a tableau based on the main point...
Hawaiʻi State Department of Education
Spontaneous Inventions
Reading out loud can be a real thrill for some, and a real issue for others. Teach your class that reading with inflection and fluency can be as easy as singing a song. They'll first analyze two Bobby McFerrin songs for intonation,...
Hawaiʻi State Department of Education
Comparing Themes
The tale of "Lon Po Po" is a Chinese story, very similar to the European tale of "Little Red Riding Hood." Learners make cross cultural comparisons between the two tales, focusing on themes common to both. They review story elements such...
Perfection Learning
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck: Clouds on the Horizon--Foreshadowing
The seeds of tragedy are planted early in John Steinbeck's story of migrant workers George Milton and Lenny Small. Nurture the imagination of readers by asking them to craft predictions about what will grow out of events in chapters one...
Curated OER
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck: Chapter 1 Reading Check
Good worksheets pinpoint key events and get readers thinking about the choices writers make when crafting a story. Here's a good instructional activity. Designed to be used with the first chapter of Of Mice and Men, consider having your...
Curated OER
"The Midwife's Apprentice"
Here is an inventive, and educationally rich way to conduct a literature study of the book, The Midwife's Apprentice. After the book has been read, learners get into three groups. One group is assigned the task of being the writers....
Curated OER
Creating a Character Chart for the Secret Garden
The Secret Garden, is a wonderful book to read with your class. After reading, why not employ the lesson plan presented here as a follow up activity? In it, pupils create character charts that portray the tremendous changes that take...
Curated OER
Learning Inference
Making inferences can be a tricky proposition for middle schoolers. In the lesson presented here, pupils practice the skill of drawing a conclusion and making a judgment - which are what making an inference is all about! There are five...