Southern Nevada Regional Professional Development Program
“Double Double Speak Speak”
Bilateral suborbital hematoma? Call an audible? 404? Have fun with “the twittering or warbling of birds,” or as 14th century French speakers would say, have fun with “jargon.” Groups match specialized jargon with plain speech, decode...
Curated OER
Budget Busters
Use this economic activity to focus on writing summaries of informational text. First, middle schoolers define common economic terms used to describe news about the economy. They closely read news about the federal budget deficit and...
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Shakespeare's Othello and the Power of Language
Students explore the basis of Iago's persuasive power by analyzing Shakespeare's use of rhetoric and figurative language. In this Othello instructional activity, students analyze Iago's rhetoric in monologues and dialogues with other...
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Text-to-Text Connections
Help youngsters make connections between two different texts. They read two stories about the same character, Ira Sleeps Over and Ira Says Goodbye. They discuss how the character of Ira acts in each of the stories, how he is the same or...
Beacon Learning Center
Beacon Lesson Plan Library: Formal or Informal?
Start talking trash with your elementary English class! Then lead a discussion comparing formal and informal language. Divide the class into groups to answer a questionnaire and analyze a set of sentence cards to analyze. This is a cool...
ReadWriteThink
Word Recognition Strategies Using Nursery Rhymes
As a class, scholars read the poems, Humpty Dumpty, Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater, and Jack and Jill, in order to identify words with the same ending sound. Using their rhyming skills, learners brainstorm additional words from word...
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Claims in "The Crisis, No. 1"
"The Crisis, No. 1" is the focus of a series of exercises that ask learners to read closely and annotate Thomas Paine's text. Groups identify claims and evidence in the essay and present their arguments to the class. Teacher background...
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Word Wake
Put your common writing errors to rest with this resource, which prompts high schoolers to create eulogies and tombstones for overused and incorrect words. They work on correcting common errors in spelling and usage mistakes in their own...
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Lesson Plan 18: Cleaning It Up
Careful proofreading is an important step in the writing process. After guided practice using a provided worksheet that details common grammar concepts, young writers refer to the worksheet as they proofread their own work. Although the...
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Lesson Plan 2: So What's a Novel, Anyway?
What makes a novel a novel? Class members select a favorite novel, record their impressions on a worksheet, and then come together in groups to discuss the elements common to narrative writing. Next, they identify the characters, the...
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Modernism in Poetry, Painting, and Music
Are you teaching Modernism to your class? Connect different areas of artistic expression in the Modernist Era. Learners read T.S. Eliot, view art by Pablo Picasso, and listen to a Modernist musical composition. This final assignment is...
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Car For Sale!
Car For sale! In this GED prep lesson plan, writers develop a classified advertisement to sell a car. After a discussion of precise words and phrases, telling details, and sensory language, sellers draft their ad for review, revision and...
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ADd IT-- ADjectives and ADverbs
Descriptive writing is a must for students to understand. Using adverbs and adjectives, they turn simple sentences into works of art. Each simple sentence gets a descriptive make-over. This lesson suggests using Laptops and SMART board...
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Famous Death Lines
High schoolers examine Shakespeare's language. They select and explore death scenes from plays that they're familiar with and practice delivering famous death lines to one another. They should attempt to recreate the emotions that they...
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Stomping and Romping with Shakespeare
Did you know that Green Eggs and Ham is written in iambic pentameter? Model the rhythm of language using Dr. Seuss’s tale. Direct class members to march about the room tapping their right foot on the first syllable and stomping their...
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The Tale of Genji
Did you know that the world's first novel was written by a woman? Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji, was published in 1021. Class members research Eastern and Western cultures in the 10th and 11th centuries, view modern adaptations of...
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Art and Writing
Students examine the writing process by describing a piece of art. In this art analysis instructional activity, students examine a painting in a museum and write a story describing the painting to someone who has never seen it before....
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The Adder and the Ladder: Figurative Language as Persuasion in "Julius Caesar"
Students read and analyze figurative language used in William Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar." They participate in a choral reading of a soliloquy, analyze the soliloquy for figurative language in small groups, and discuss how the reading...
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Discovering Shakespeare's Language through Sonnet 27
Students explore the language of Shakespeare. In this poetry lesson, students watch a video of illuminated images that accompany Sonnet 27. Students analyze the language of the poem and the image selections.
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Reading/English Language Arts/ Instructional Strategies
Learners are given a line drawing that only that students sees. They are asked to describe the drawings to the reset of the class to see if they can draw it as the teacher describes it. Learners work with a partner, and they are given a...
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When You Reeeaaallly Want to Say Something
Kids paraphrase an entry from The Elements of Style, and then revise a sentence. They use the Visual Thesaurus and find synonyms for the phrase very pretty, brainstorm a list of intensifiers (as alternatives to really and very), then...
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What's In a Noun: Grammar and Usage
Nine lessons in a grammar and usage unit provide endless opportunities for drill and practice. Topics include the four types of sentences, subject and predicates, nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, adverbs and prepositions, conjunctions...
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Keyboarding: Formatting A Report Using MLA Style
Introduce your class to the MLA style of formatting. In addition to studying the formatting, learners improve language skills and review word processor features. They use the Interwrite SchoolPad for the first time to assist in proofing...
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Better Vocabulary Through Derivatives
Learners create a word tree poster that illustrates the way a root word can serve as the basis for many related terms. Although designed for a Latin language class, the concepts here could be used with any class study of Latin or Greek...