When would two paws up denote a blockbuster film in your classroom? Only when young writers create movie reviews from a pet's perspective in this imaginative expository writing practice. This engaging topic begins with a class discussion...

Use a fun and creative activity to introduce junior high learners to how writing changes for different audiences and purposes. The activity begins with a reading by the instructor where teens visualize a food fight in the cafeteria. In...

Start a lesson on poetic voice with a peer to peer discussion on what characterizes the strength in the voice with which a writer chooses to express himself/herself. In pairs, readers are tasked with reading and creating T-charts for...

Help young readers find, identify, and use their voices with a set of empowering activities based on Peter H. Reynolds' trilogy of books. Sky Color, Ish, and The Dot focus on recognizing moods and treating each other...

A discussion of the Supreme Court’s Opinion of Tinker v. Des Moines generates a discussion of the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment. Although the key elements of this lesson plan are based on a video that is not included, the...

Your young learners will delve into the language of primary source documents in order to identify the characteristics, benefits, and costs of nonviolence. The lesson includes a mix of activities, including an anticipatory activity,...

Shakespeare can be a challenge to the most skilled high school readers. This selection of short answer questions helps increase understanding of the character, Katherine, by addressing dialogue, tone of voice, making inferences, and...

This creepy fantasy story needs an ending! Learners use a spooky voice to read a short story ending at an ellipsis...what was in the dark, dark box? They illustrate what they think could have been in there and write a title for the...

Prepare your pupils for making excellent presentations. Class members discuss elements of a successful presentation, work in groups to come up with their own scripts for the featured video, compare their work to the original...

How does a computer recognize voice commands? Scholars learn about digital assistants and natural language processing (NLP) algorithms in the ninth lesson of the series. They begin building a simple digital assistant and work on this...

Running an election campaign takes money. Class groups must effectively budget money in order to design and purchase sufficient advertising aimed at procuring classmates' votes. After completing an online tutorial, they also write and...

After reading Love That Dog by Sharon Creech (and possibly shedding a few tears), middle schoolers work on their own sixteen-word poems with a Six Trait writing activity. They focus on word choice in this activity to capture an...

Don't be so emotional! Scholars take part in an activity where they consider how future robots will be able to show emotions. They place paper bags over their heads, act out emotions through body movements, and have others guess the...

In an engaging anticipatory set, the teacher uses several different strategies to activate prior knowledge about reading with expression, including using sentence strips (that must be prepped ahead of time) to show different moods. The...

These activities center around acting out a play to help create fluent readers who use expression and emotion. As readers work through the play the first time, they also practice decoding strategies. In small groups of four, they then...

Harmony is the focus of this band lesson. Upper graders play the Star Spangled Banner, while focusing on harmony, chords, and musical voice. This lesson includes several suggested cross-curricular activities.

In this everyday editing activity, students correct grammatical mistakes in a short paragraph about Laura Ingalls Wilder. the errors range from punctuation, capitalization, spelling, and grammar.

Put your class in the shoes of someone - or something - else with this lesson, which encourages writers to keep a diary from the perspective of a living creature or an abstraction. Use Doreen Cronin's Diary of a Worm and the Six Trait...

Using Keynote, pupils will collaborate with their peers to create a tall tale. Each person in the group will participate by creating slides, adding text, and recording their voice. Tip: Have each group present their tall tales to the...

As scholars are learning about letter sound correspondence use this activity to help them with the /u/ sound. Learners examine a large u on the board, identifying it if they can. They listen to you make its sound, explaining to...

Mix it up and engage learners in a instructional activity on music and physical science. Using cups, strings, guitars, and voice, the class will experiment with sound vibration and frequency. They'll use each instrument and fill out a...

The design of this two-day lesson eloquently exposes learners to the topic of social justice for people with disabilities. The plan is built off the reading of Are You Alone on Purpose? by Nancy Werlin. The activity introduces...

Here is an ambitious and engaging instructional activity that should help elementary schoolers begin to develop a basic understanding of human rights. Pupils are asked to think about their own rights, the rights of others, and how an...

Do your young writers need a little help varying their sentence structure? Have them work on common errors, sentence fluency, and writing patterns with a series of language arts activities. The resource includes reading passages as well...