Identify the unique personal attributes of your class members. Begin by viewing the Visual Thesaurus and discussing displayed attributes associated with famous American leaders. Using these identity maps as models, pupils generate nouns...

Looking for a game that teaches students about how to use a thesaurus, and reinforces the concept of synonyms? Each player will have the opportunity to use their "tools" in this engaging lesson. They will use their thesauruses in order...

Young poets get inspiration and guidance for making word association poems with the Visual Thesaurus. Your class could complete this project with nothing more than a pencil and paper as well. A nice one-off for a substitute during your...

Pupils create trading cards for elements in the Periodic Table. Initially, they are introduced to the Periodic Table of Elements and the concept of elements in the world around us. After dividing into groups, learners use the Visual...

Students, assessing a variety of formatting tools with Microsoft Word, utilize a bank of vocabulary words to make a personal dictionary of nouns. They classify nouns for people, places, things and ideas and separate them into common and...

Students are assigned a separate species of plant or bird to research. Using a worksheet, they are responsible for finding a variety of information on their assigned plant or bird. They also complete a mini-poster and give an oral...

A terrific lesson on homophones awaits your youngsters. First, pupils access a website that contains lists of homophones. Then, it's time to get creative! Everyone gets a piece of poster board and they create a homophone cartoon -...

Fifth graders review their writing for repetition of words at the beginning of the sentence.  In this informal writing lesson, 5th graders share examples of sentence beginnings.  Students use a thesaurus to find antonyms and...

Students make a mind web to describe their favorite soda. They then make thumbnail sketches of their labels. Tehy create a unique font with which to write the mane of their soda.

Discover the Virtual Thesaurus with your class. They use the Virtual Thesaurus to assist them in an inquiry-based approach to discovering the meanings of some common Latin and Greek roots. Each child then teaches a particular root and...

Students explore descriptive writing by creating headstones. In this memorial instructional activity, students utilize an 11" x 17" piece of paper to create a cemetery headstone memorializing a word rather than a person. Students...

Can colors help to convey a mood in writing? Explore this question with your class using the songs "Grey Street" by the Dave Matthews Band and "Blu is a Mood" by Blu Cantrell. After analyzing the effect of the color words in these songs...

Students explore life and language development in the Elizabethan Age. In this English lesson students complete web-quests and other activities surrounding Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

Students create an acronym out of their name. They use a thesaurus and the computer to create it. They also add pictures to make it more creative.

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),...

Students perform an "autopsy" on a dill pickle to determine its' cause of death. After finding "clues" inside the "body," students organize facts and use their imagination to write an epitaph. As an alternative, students may view a...

Fifth graders create synonym trees by writing their main word on the tree trunk and gluing synonym words to represent the leaves. In this synonyms lesson plan, 5th graders play a class game where they must find a partner who has a...

Alliterative adjective nicknames generate stories inspired by Rosemary Wells' book Noisy Nora (also a thematic complement to any class with children who make a ruckus to get attention). Class members explore basic story elements --...

Double click that mouse because you just found an amazing lesson! This cross-curricular Ornithology lesson incorporates literature, writing, reading informational text, data collection, scientific inquiry, Internet research, art, and...

Students analyze the text in Charlotte's Web. In this language arts lesson, students dissect the passages from Charlotte's Web, specifically the adjectives Charlotte used to describe Wilbur. Finally, students play a game using "word...

Students complete online exercises for synonyms. For this synonyms lesson, students work in pairs to find pictures around the room and choose one as the music plays. Students write a word to describe the picture and discuss their...

Explain a natural phenomenon in an original myth. After researching the phenomenon they have chosen, young readers use factual information to include in their myth.  They find synonyms and new phrases to create vivid images as they...

Fifth graders use teacher-selected vocabulary to present a written story to a first grade student. The book include a glossary of terms and illustrations of the terms. This is a great lesson for big/little buddies to do together!

Fifth graders write a paragraph titled "All About Me" in the computer lab after they have drawn graphic organizers to fill in background information about themselves and used a "10-Point Writing Checklist" to do peer editing.