Teach your English language learners about conversations by inviting them to participate in a conversation about an interesting object. Through this conversation, learners will naturally use various verb tenses and practice asking...

Study some of the most prominent poets and works of poetry in history with a language arts poetry unit. From Virgil to Shakespeare to Dickinson to Angelou, the resources present biographies and examples of poetic elements to...

What do the words pizza, broccoli, and ciao have in common? Why they are all English words that originally came from Italian. Ask your middle schoolers to guess the origins of a list of words by matching the word with the language from...

American women have been working toward equal rights since the ink dried on the Declaration of Independence. Focused on the words and actions of Sojourner Truth, Shirley Chisholm, and Venus Williams, a language arts lesson takes eighth...

Study the impact and possible outcomes of the Exxon-Mobil merger in your language arts, social studies, or economics class. Secondary learners evaluate a series of graphs, write a paragraph interpreting the data, and engage in class...

Analyze the motivation, purpose, and value of letters to the editor by examining letters written in response to the violence at Columbine High School. For homework, middle and high schoolers write their own letters to the editor about an...

“It was a miracle.” Basil Heatter’s “The Long Night of the Little Boats,” which details the miraculous rescue of the British army from the shores of Dunkirk in 1940, is featured in a series of exercises that ask class members to read,...

If your language arts learners have a hard time determining the universal theme of a written work, use a straightforward worksheet to help them find it. After reviewing a list of common themes, kids note the title, character, plot, point...

Focus on presentation techniques with this instructional activity, which prompts middle schoolers give an impromptu speech. They practice public speaking by giving a short unprepared speech. Some preparations are made to include an...

Finished your novel? What’s next? Designing the book cover, of course. But how to begin? After examining the covers of published books and noting the common elements of these jackets, young novelists design a front and back cover for...

Kids practice using five types of context clues (definition, synonym, antonym, example, and general) to decode idiomatic language.

Have your class doing everything from reading literature, analyzing literary devices, identifying independent and dependent clauses, discussing, and writing creatively with the rich resource found here. After a mini lesson on independent...

Practice listening skills while studying oral story tellers from different parts of Louisiana. Consider the regional dialects and insider language of folk groups with your class. Identify language as part of folk life and recognize that...

In this everyday editing instructional activity learners correct grammatical mistakes in a short paragraph about the first woman to swim the English Channel. The errors range from punctuation, capitalization, spelling, and grammar.

Technology is a hot topic, so why not discuss it with your English language learners? There are three viewpoints from students included on this page, along with vocabulary words and ten tech-related questions to discuss.

Play this slide show and then find out how much your class has learned with the included quiz. After jotting down the definitions of each term, class members label 10 examples with one of five terms: simile, metaphor, personification,...

Students view the film "Nell" and analyze it for presentation of language pathologies and dialects. They consider the definition of dialect, research phonetic representation of dialects and observe their own communities for speech patterns.

Examine the contributions of African-Americans in the worlds of art and literature. Over the course of a few days, young scholars will read and analyze a poem, a short story, and a piece of art. They complete a range of...

Students describe idioms and their use in everyday language. They describe the difference between literal and idiomatic meanings. In groups, students use iPhoto to create books that explain and illustrate a variety of idioms describing...

Discuss with the class the reasons for identifying and defining the term material culture as refering to a vast array of objects and activities that people make and do traditionally. Your class can identify diverse crafts and decorative...

Participate in authentic career research, and make effective and realistic career/academic choices entering high school. Develop communication skills, demonstrate English language arts proficiency, and share a group presentation with...

In order to build discussion skills, English language learners use a worksheet with several questions regarding crime and punishment in the justice system. They interview fellow classmates, noting how each feels about a given topic. They...

"Lucky lady." "Straight as an arrow." Here's a figurative language worksheet that provides middle schoolers with six examples and asks them to identify the literary device modeled.

What do the words alligator, armadillo, and cockroach all have in common? Each one is an English word with Spanish origins. Introduce young etymologists to the joys of discovering word origins with a lesson that asks them to create a...