Curated OER
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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Sleuthing A Writer's Skills
Students read The Train Ride Home by Robin Solomon. In this literature response lesson, students will inspect the writing of Solomon to determine how she established a certain tone through her word choice and paragraph structure....
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Rebecca Brown's "Forgiveness" and Christine Delea's "CoCo Chanel in the Stairwell"
Students, after reading and analyzing Rebecca Brown's "Forgiveness" and Christine Delea's "CoCo Chanel in the Stairwell," explore and focus on the author's tone and genre analysis. They interpret different rhetorical situations as they...
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War Literature
Working in groups, young historians review a war poem written by Stephen Crane. After reviewing the poem, they present an oral interpretation of the poem and hold a panel discussion about their analysis. The panel is made up of five or...
RAND Corporation
Project ALERT
Why do people use drugs? What are the consequences? The alternatives? How can young people resist the pressures to use drugs? The Project Alert drug prevention program provides middle schoolers with the information they need and the...
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More Choices
Fourth graders create onomatopoeia for a variety of things such as a mean dog, a crying baby or a doorbell ringing after exploring word choice as used by authors in selected books. They complete a Word Choice worksheet that is attached.
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Thinking Out Loud
Students share opinions about whether a series of statements from the internet constitute facts or opinions. They read and analyze blogs published in on the web in order to understand the use of fact, opinion, and tone of voice when...
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Out of the Fire
Students share ideas about a lead for a breaking news story regarding the California wildfires. They brainstorm angles for a series of news items and write analysis papers that address the tone and content of a piece published in The New...
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Dragonwings
Middle schoolers engage in a lesson that is concerned with the literature study of Dragonwings. They write about the story from the perspective of a reader that is well informed towards the last chapters. Students also find target...
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Ornithology and Real World Science
Double click that mouse because you just found an amazing lesson plan! This cross-curricular Ornithology lesson plan incorporates literature, writing, reading informational text, data collection, scientific inquiry, Internet research,...
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A Hurricane Blowing In
Students write a scene. In this creative writing instructional activity, students read The Lightning Thief and discuss the sentence fluency and word choice in the writing. Students complete a writing assignment where they create an...
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The Way to Venezuela
Students investigate various facets of Venezuelan culture, politics, history and current events to develop an introductory chapter of a guidebook to the country.
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Breaking the Chains, Rising Out of Circumstances
Students research slavery in ancient Rome and compare and contrast it to slavery in the United States. In this slavery lesson, students investigate the differences of slavery in different parts of the country, write a paper to report...
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E-tiquette
Learners develop appropriate ways to communicate via e-mail. They evaluate examples of inappropriate e-mails and create preferable alternatives.
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Truman Capote: Other Voices, Other Rooms
Young scholars read and analyze Truman Capote's autobiographical short story, "A Christmas Memory." They discuss writing styles, conduct Internet research on Truman Capote, write a book review, and write a short story based on one of...
Curated OER
Do You Recall?
Students share reactions to Mattel CEO Bob Eckert's message to consumers. They identify how Mattel is responding to several product recalls by reading and discussing the article "After Stumbling, Mattel Cracks Down in China." Students...
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Jingles Sell
Students explore the different persuasive techniques used in commercial and print advertisements. Students then analyze a variety of print ads and discuss the effects of a country's political, economic, and social climates on its...
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Looking for Newton
Students discuss the rhyming pattern of various types of poetry. With a focus on limericks, they follow the specific rhyme scheme and create a limerick about Newton. They share their poem with the class and write another one related to...