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Dive into Summer Writing!
Tips and tools to help us reflect, refresh, and renew prior to the new school year.
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Create the Habit of Reflective Writing
Developing the habit of reflective writing can help you analyze, organize, and improve your teaching.
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The Hatfield and McCoy Feud
Fourth graders investigate the Hatfield and McCoy feud. In this Hatfield and McCoy feud lesson, 4th graders examine factors that caused the feud. Students also locate on a map where the feud took place, make a timeline of the main events...
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Honoring Our Pets During National Pet Week
Recognize National Pet Week with reading and writing activities to celebrate the animals in your pupils' lives.
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Talking with the Author
Encourage your class to interact with complex texts through dialectical journal writing.
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Travel Tips! A Guide for Smoother Field Trips
Suggestions for making your next field trip successful, rather than stressful.
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Effective Writing Prompts: Getting Beyond the Dark and Stormy Night
Help struggling writers with strategies to reach different learning styles and reduce anxiety.
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Knights of the Round Table
As an exploration of the Knights of the Round Table, this activity helps students organize their information and check for understanding by using the comprehension questions. This packet would be a terrific supplement to a unit on this...
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A Better Class of Journal-ists
Young academics create a current events journal by skimming newspapers for articles that fit defined guidelines for informational texts. After cutting out two articles each week to add to their journals, they write a brief description of...
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Student Opinion: What Are You Afraid Of?
A great resource for informational texts as well as writing topics, the New York Times website provides writing prompts about various news articles through The Learning Network. This particular activity provides a very short reading...
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Investigation of a Key Public Policy Issue
Twelfth graders select and analyze a public policy issue. In groups, they create a hot list of web sites that have been explored and investigated as a result of a web search. Using their research, 12th graders individually produce a...
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Natural Twig Journals
Artists of all ages participate in a very basic bookbinding technique incorporating a dimensional object and simple fastening method. They create their own book to use as a sketchbook, writing surface or scrapbook. The results are...
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Marketing to Teens: Introduction
An introductory lesson plan shows learners how pervasive and influential advertising is in our culture; particularly, how teenagers are actively targeted by advertisers. As teenagers, your students already have all the information they...
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Picturing America: Images and Words of Hope from Romare Bearden and Langston Hughes
A carefully crafted three-day instructional activity integrates poetry and visual art. By analyzing and comparing Langston Hughes' poem "Mother and Son" and Romare Bearden's collage "The Dove," readers explore the theme of hope. The...
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Belgium
Middle schoolers create a travel journal for an imaginary trip around Belgium. They identify animals and plants that live in Belgium. Students describe the landscape of Belgium. They order major event in Belgium history. Middle schoolers...
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Hear Ye, Hear Ye: Read All About It!
Develop an online newspaper covering the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The class publishes their newspaper on the school's Web site and analyze both primary and secondary sources.
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A Colony is Born : Lesson 5 - Dear Mem
Discover colonies! Young historians will listen to a primary source journal entry read aloud with a backdrop of wave sounds. They discuss the entry, add historical facts to a chart and personal insights to another. Then they listen to...
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Seedfolks Journal Entry Choices
Keep your class thinking about Seedfolks after they read each chapter by requiring them to keep a journal about the story. Hand out these journal entry prompts at the beginning of the story so that your learners know what to expect. For...
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My __ Grade Writing Journal
Encourage your class to write their thoughts down. The journal is made up of a cover page, where a pupil can write their grade level and name, and pages for each month of the year.
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An Introduction to The Outsiders
Introduce S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders with a bell work journal that asks class members to define loyalty. Key words (patience, unity, honesty, caring, etc.), drawn from their musings, are posted around the room, and groups search for...
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Using Aphorisms to Help Dealing with People
Here's a formal plan for what many effective teachers already do: Provide a week's worth of aphorisms and have learners choose one to write about in their journals each day. They reflect on the meaning of each aphorism and project how it...
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The Cask of Amontillado Journal
Nemo me impune lacessit! Is revenge a dish best served cold or with a trowel and masonry? After reading The Cask of Amontillado, class members are asked to respond to a series of journal prompts about Poe’s story and their own...
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Guided Journal
Students complete Dossier handouts that define qualities of fictional journal characters, and then write journal entries with specific grammar requirements, while assuming identity of fictional adults.
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Run On Sentences
Sixth graders review three sample sentences in order to identify sentence structure, and to practice how to edit sentences appropriately. They work with a partner to define a run-on sentence and identify three ways to correct it. They...