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Medicine Show
Students gather anecdotal evidence about various herbal remedies' abilities to cure ailments, develop hypotheses from these observations, and design scientifically valid experiments that could prove their suppositions.
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Enough to Make Your Head Spin
Students appreciate the value of nonverbal communication, focusing on the shaking or nodding of one's head, and the meanings attached to each activity in Bulgaria and in the United States. They explain how body language aids...
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Life's Instructions: Collecting Family Sayings in a Student Publication
Students explore proverbs and "sayings." They collect family "sayings," rules and common statements. Students research proverbs and positive anecdotes. Students create a book containing their collections.
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A Critical Role
Students read a New York Times review of the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco. They discuss the roles and responsibilities of a cultural critic, and prepare for a visit to a local museum in order to write their own reviews.
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Poetry and Visualization
Young scholars use visualization techniques when reading poetry. In this visualization and poetry lesson, students work in groups to present a tableau that depicts a word from the poem as classmates guess the word. Young...
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School Newspaper
Fifth graders write a website based school newspaper using a variety of literary forms to present the news of the school.
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Millennium Superheroes
Students develop an understanding of the qualities that "superheroes," or people who have favorably influenced society, possess. They create a database with questions that pertain to what they want to find out about a hero of the...
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A Moment in Time
Eighth graders study poems to see how punctuation, line length, rhythm and word choice can be used to create a memorable moment. They read and discuss poems by Shel Silverstein.
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Personify This
Eighth graders study personification in published works of poetry, then create their own through the use of diamante or cinquain poetry. They read and discuss poetry by Shel Silverstein, William Jay Smith, and Elinor Wylie.
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I Just Want to Say
Eighth graders study poetic devices included in conversation poems and explore their eloquent messages. They read and discuss poems by Langston Hughes and Don Marquis.
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I'm A Poet and Now I Know It
Eighth graders gather ideas generated from other poems and their own inspiration, to create original poetry. A celebration is included as students bind and submit poems for publication.
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Can You Figure Language?
Eighth graders study similes and metaphors and how to explain and create them. After a lecture/demo, 8th graders access websites and worksheets imbedded in this plan to create their own writing.
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...And the Earth Did Not Devour Him
Students examine impressions of a community of migrant workers in Texas who go north to pick crops. The lesson highlights the poverty and discrimination that a family suffers in the 1970's.
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Horatio's Drive
Students assess the literary quality and elements of Jackson's journey to write a ballad about his automobile adventure.
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Poetry Pop-Up
Third graders, after exploring the process of writing poetry through imagery words that go beyond pen and paper, create a Poetry Pop-Up Book. They incorporate the use of the Thesaurus and clip-art/digital photography to assist them in...
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Digital Poetry Books
Learners, after reviewing the writing process and assessing how to use a digital camera to take creative photos, create a Digital Poetry Book. They incorporate the use of Microsoft Photo Draw and Publisher for the creation of their...
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Imagery: Symbolic/realistic
Students recognize and use the visual arts as a form of communication. They use the computer as a visual arts tool to gather images for a story they are telling. They discuss related stories that differ in their realistic images. They...
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All About Me Brochure
Eighth graders complete a prewriting activity to gather information about themselves. They create a brochure using their prewriting activity that will introduce themselves to either a prospective employer or their freshman teachers.
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Expanding Journal Writing Entries For Beginning Writers
First graders through a variety of strategies assess how to write in journals openly and effectively. Those strategies include integration of technology, story telling, group and team work, performance-based assessment/rubrics, visual...
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Women in History: Research for Expository Writing
After reading an excerpt from Amelia Earhart's autobiography, The Fun of It, learners explore various nonfiction resources about her life and write a short newspaper article on a specific event. They then develop a longer piece of...
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D.E.W. (Drop Everything and Write!)
Learners gather, determine validity and reliability of, analyze and organize information. They employ the most effective format for purpose and audience. Students write fully developed paragraphs that have details and information...
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Advanced Spelling- "Prose"
In this spelling words worksheet, students unscramble the letters in 13 questions to spell words that match the dictionary definitions. The first and last letters of the words are correct. All pertain to prose.
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The Civil War: Learning from Our Peers
Fifth graders discover the Civil War as taught by their peers. For this Civil War lesson, 5th graders create their own lesson plans to teach the class about the Civil War. The students are monitored by the teacher but are given lectures...
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Argumentation and Logic
Students recognize inductive and deductive reasoning and analyze common fallacies in critical thinking. For this argumentation and logic lesson, students use role playing activities and specific instances of inductive and deductive...