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Same Old Story
Students relate their favorite childhood stories to their lives today. Through personal interviews, students discover the connections between their favorite stories and their own choices and characters, as well as connections to the...
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Developing Story Ideas
Students complete activities to learn how to develop story ideas in journalistic writing. In this story ideas lesson, students learn news value judging criteria, identify language to ask beat sources for story ideas, distinguish story...
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Fiction Stories
Students complete writing activities for fiction. In this fiction writing lesson, students complete four sets of activities in a writer's workshop format to practice reading and writing in a fiction style. Students develop plot outlines,...
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Picture It: Teaching Descriptive Writing
There are many fun and effective ways to teach students to write descriptively.
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Poetry Through Digital Storytelling
Bring digital storytelling to your language arts class! To begin, learners select their own topic, such as a poem that reflects a life experience they had or a historical figure who interests them. Then they work to create a storyboard...
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Historical Agency in History Book Sets (HBS)
Study historical events by combining the study of historical fiction and non-fiction. Learners read about true past events in historical fiction novels and then research non-fiction accounts of the same events. What are some differences...
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Photo Essay Semester Project
Students reinforce research and organizational skills with this project. They create a photo essay and conduct an interview with a person associated with their chosen topic. Pupils may choose to get their pictures from a digital camera,...
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Writing a Mystery Story
Students examine the elements of mystery stories and read Rage in Harlem. In reciprocal teaching groups, they discuss the author's development of the story, and complete dialectical journals.
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Writing the Mystery with a Purpose
Students present the outline of the mystery story they are writing while working in reciprocal teaching groups. They respond to group members writing before they continue to finish revisions.
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Writing Diagnostics and Introduction to Literary Terms
Assess your new learners' writing abilities and knowledge of literary terms with these diagnostic activities. Part of a back-to-school unit, this is meant to provide the teacher with information about the ability levels of their class....
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All in a Day's Work
Who is Herman Melville? Read and discuss "Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street." Then, discuss the film adaptations of Melville's work and translate a passage of the text into modern-day English. Discussion questions are...
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Photographic Memories
Explore how photographs can represent a whole story to a viewer. Middle schoolers work on narrative writing techniques in this lesson, focusing on photographs from the New York Times to write first-person descriptive narratives....
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I Had a Hero Lesson
Students read "I Had a Hero" a memoir written by a Peace Corps volunteer serving in the Democratic Republic of Congo. They discuss the story, respond to it in writing, complete comprehension activities and relate the account to their own...
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Television Newscasts
When we watch news broadcasts on television, we receive a much more visual perspective than when we read the newspaper. How do sets, clothing, and music contribute to our understanding of the story? Compare American and Canadian news...
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Multimedia Storytelling
Experiment with multimedia storytelling. After watching a segment of American Family, first, middle and high schoolers tell a story about their families, clarifying the setting, characters, and script. They work on setting their story in...
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Literature: Mapping the Mockingbird
Young scholars read Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, focusing on setting. They list items that create mental images of the novel's setting along with location references to characters and events. Using posterboard, they construct...
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Writing - Fiction
After listening to the opening description in Of Mice and Men, high schoolers try their hand at writing a short story that includes a mugging. The story should include all five senses. Each of the pupils reads their opening paragraph to...
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Drama/Theatre
Young scholars discover how setting, props, and character-action communicate information about the characters and the story. Access to videos and a video camera are important to make this lesson a success.
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How Cultures Differ - Two Different Perspectives on the Same Even
Learners explore the effects of culture through the story Running by Peter Hessler. In this geography and cultural lesson, students act as newspaper reporters covering the story of the race. Learners write newspaper articles as reporters...
New York City Department of Education
What Did I Do to Be so Black and Blue: How Did Jazz Influence Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man
How did jazz influence Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man? Class members read some of Ellison's non-fiction writings about blues and jazz, listen to records, watch videos, and engage in student-centered discussions. They then produce podcasts...
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Photojournalism And Creating A Layout
Students gain an idea of how a photographer prepares and shoots a photo story. They explore how to use Pagemaker and lay out a story for the newspaper. They see the powerful effect that photography can have on news stories.
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Cultural Creation Myths
Students write original plays based on supernatural explanations of existence. In this cultural creation myths lesson, students listen to five different stories about supernatural creation. Students record similarities and differences in...
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James Welch's Fools Crow
Learners explore the history of Montana's Native Americans by reading James Welch's Fools Crow. Set shortly after the Civil War, the novel focuses on a young Blackfoot Indian and his tribe. Over the course of several weeks, class members...
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Looking at Life through the Creation of Personal Metaphors
Students focus on the creation of personal metaphors, which are first illustrated in pictures and caricatures and then extended to descriptive/analytical paragraphs. They teach the instructional activity to others using their own...