Roald Dahl
Matilda - Miss Honey and The Trunchbull
As the instructor reads aloud several quotes from five chapters of the story Matilda, class members mime their interpretation of the scenes. Then, after reading "Miss Honey" and "The Trenchbull" (chapters seven and eight), the class...
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Eating Up Idioms
Ah, food idioms! Now that sounds tasty. Class members read and discuss various food-related idioms, create an illustration of a food-related idiom, and develop a class book or bulletin board to celebrate figurative language and National...
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Let's Go Exploring!
Use a Courbet painting of a cave or tunnel opening to reinforce the importance of descriptive writing. Writers of all ages use sensory details to describe what the scene depicts as they pretend to be in the painting. Then they imagine...
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Borrowing Narrative Skills from Mr. Fletcher: Using a "Prompts in Reverse" Technique to Inspire Your Writers
Help your class find their writing voices with this instructional activity which uses the work of Ralph Fletcher to guide a "Prompt in Reverse" activity. Using the chapter "First Pen" from Fletcher's Marshfield Dreams, learners decipher...
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House and Holmes: A Guide to Deductive and Inductive Reasoning
Test your pupils' reasoning skills with several activities and a quick mystery to solve. Learners watch and analyze a few video clips that demonstrate reasoning in action, practice deduction with an interactive and collaborative...
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Understanding and Using Suffixes to Expand Vocabulary
After a review of what suffixes are and how they are used, middle schoolers utilize a worksheet that is embedded in the plan to work in pairs to strengthen their understanding and skills in using these very important parts of our...
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Similes, Metaphors, and Symbols
Here is an outline of a lesson in which learners examine the use of similes, metaphors, and symbols in poetry. They define similes, metaphors, and symbols, complete a handout, and create a poem using types of figurative language.
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Elements of Fables
Students explore the attributes of fables. In this literature lesson, students read several fables and identify the moral lesson, characterization, and figurative language in each. Students then retell their favorite fables in their own...
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Idioms
Use this podcast lesson to familiarize scholars with the characteristics, history, and cultural implications of idioms. As part of the Walking Classroom curriculum, kids listen to a 12-minute podcast as they walk around campus. If you...
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A Sense of Place
Students read "Fish Tale: Falling For a Live One" from The New York Times and discuss the methods and techniques the writer uses to create a strong mental image. Students pick a place in their community they wish to write about and...
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Renaissance 'Movers and Shakers.'
Sixth graders complete a research project. In this research and Renaissance lesson, 6th graders take a pre-test on important Renaissance figures and discuss their answers. Students research their Renaissance figure and present their...
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Predicting the Meaning of Unfamiliar Words in a Text
Middle schoolers develop strategies for what to do when they come upon words in a text that they don't know. After a class discussion, pupils are given a selection of text that contains some very difficult words. They are instructed to...
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The Ballad Of Captain Super
Engaging and fun, this lesson plan is a good way to reinforce context clues with this lesson plan, in which middle schoolers investigate literary puzzles. They apply critical thinking skills to codes in order to solve them. They use a...
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Leonardo da Vinci
Students select appropriate tools and technology to perform tests, collect data, and display data. They construct appropriate graphs from data and develop qualitative statements about the relationships between variables.
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Dragonfly
The speed of a dragonfly brings math into the real world as your learners collaboratively see the value in calculating unit rates in direct proportion problems. This six-phase lesson encourages you, as the teacher, to only ask questions...
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Let's Plot Points
Use coordinate grid paper to plot points and identify shapes that are already plotted on the paper by saying their coordinates. Pupils also measure the distance between points and play the game Battleship. There are several web links and...
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Patterns and Functions
Students investigate properties of perimeter and area. In this middle school mathematics lesson, students explore patterns in a problem solving context. Students model and solve problems using various representations for the data as...