Handout
San José State University

Writing Concisely: Deleting or Replacing Unnecessary Information

For Students 9th - Higher Ed Standards
Are you actually feeling really tired of reading wordy, redundant, long, lengthy sentences practically all the time over and over again? Introduce writers to this handout and exercise to teach to tighten up their prose! Provides two ways...
Handout
San José State University

Transition Words

For Students 9th - Higher Ed Standards
Translate transition words for your class with this handout and brief exercise. Fairly straightforward and informative, it includes sample sentences and a working link to a more complete list of transition words. There are two different...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Graphic Organizing: Early American History

For Teachers 8th - 12th
In collaborative groups, young US historians sort cards (each labeled with a single early American event or issue) according to which of the first four presidents was leading the country at the time. Learners copy the events onto a...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Supreme Court Decisions on Freedom of Religion

For Teachers 11th Standards
What does freedom of religion mean? Analyze a series of Supreme Court cases where the First Amendment right to freedom of religion was put to the test. They discuss the cases' outcomes and argue whether the right decision was made....
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Guest Speaker Preparation: A Cooperative Lesson

For Teachers 3rd - 12th
Are you planning to have a guest speaker talk to your class? Prepare in advance and help your class transform into an engaged and thoughtful audience. Before the visit, young writers work cooperatively to brainstorm what they want to...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Olympic Shadow Boxes

For Teachers 9th - 12th
What a cool way to incorporate art and use reference materials. Learners use classroom reference materials such as almanacs, encyclopedias, and dictionaries to answer one of four questions, and then they use the information to create a...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Free-Writing Exercise

For Teachers 7th - 12th
Use the suggested question "What does it mean to be a citizen?" to prompt your writers. After they free-write for five minutes, have them trade papers with another classmate. For the next five minutes, class members respond to the new...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Practice Makes It Better

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Use the Internet to expand the audience for portfolio writings and motivate young writers to edit their work. Have your class members select a piece of writing from their portfolios to be polished and published on the World Wide Web....
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Vocabulary Building - Declaration of Independence

For Teachers 7th - Higher Ed
Young scholars read the first part of the Declaration of Independence and mark the words they don't know. First, they try to guess what the words mean by looking at the them in context, and then they look up the words in a dictionary.
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Exploration of the Bill of Rights

For Teachers 11th - 12th
Research the Bill of Rights and the necessity for each of the protections that it provides. They choose one of the rights and, pretending to be a framer of the Constitution, give a speech as to why that should be included in the...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Understanding URLs

For Teachers 4th - 12th
Study the different domain suffixes in web address becoming familiar with the types of organization that each suffix indicates. They evaluate web site using specified criteria.
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

A Time Period in American History

For Teachers 5th - 12th
Researchers combine music, narration, photos, and text to form a presentation for their classmates about a time period in American History. Proper research and documentation techniques are emphasized. The lesson, created by Apple...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Paragraph Building

For Teachers 10th - 12th
Build the skills your budding authors need to develop to compose well-structured paragraphs. Give them the topic sheet (included here), and have them write a cohesive paragraph using the ideas listed. Consider having them include two...
Lesson Plan
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Curated OER

The Game of Persuasion

For Teachers 9th - 12th
Why is it so important to learn the art of persuasion? Being persuasive helps you acquire the things you want or the things you feel are necessary. Print out these scenarios and assign one to each group of high schoolers. As a team, they...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Japan Communication

For Teachers 9th - 12th
The Japanese communicate in very different ways than people in the US. Using three essential questions as a guide, learners look at different scenarios (included) and compare customs seen here and there. All the materials you need are...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Persuasive Essays

For Teachers 11th
Follow this outline to write persuasive essays with your 11th grade college prep classes. Using the internet, they research a topic, citing their sources correctly. They work with a partner to peer edit their rough drafts, checking for...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Personal Travel Guide to a Chinese City

For Teachers 6th - 11th
Scholars become travel guides in this group research project to investigate a Chinese city or region for a presentation. Heavily based on Internet research, the activity requires participants to jigsaw the final project, so each team...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Better Vocabulary Through Derivatives

For Teachers 4th - 12th
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...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Connotation: Three Lessons for Effective Word Choice

For Teachers 6th - 9th
Over the course of three days, middle schoolers explore the concept of connotation. They differentiate between the connotative and denotative meanings of sports team names, develop their own team names, logos, and text, and revise a news...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Narrative Nuts and Bolts

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
After viewing slides and reading about child labor, young authors compose an original narrative story. They practice note-taking skills and work to effectively engage a reader by incorporating plot, logical order, complex characters,...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Narrative Writing

For Teachers 9th - 12th
Imagine a day in the life of a child who has to work 12-14 hours a day, seven days a week. After viewing images and reading stories of child laborers, class members select an image and write a richly detailed narrative about a typical...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

"The Merchants of Cool"

For Teachers 9th - 12th
Why are so many advertisements geared towards the teenage population? Watch a video with your class (link included), and have them fill out the attached listening guide. Then discuss persuasion, presenting biased information, and where...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Career Planning and Research

For Teachers 9th - 12th
What do you want to do when you finish school? Most high schoolers have an idea of what they'd want to do, but little idea of how to achieve this goal. After researching a career of their choosing, learners identify qualifications,...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Irony

For Teachers 9th - 12th
What are the three types of irony? High schoolers engage in a lesson about the use of irony while reading O.Henry's short story "Gift of the Magi." They'll discuss rising action, climax, and resolution in the text before highlighting the...

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