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Language Arts: Retelling Leo the Longhorn
Students reinforce sequencing skills by retelling stories. After being assigned roles in the production, they create dialog, props, and costumes for retelling the story "Leo the Longhorn." Working in cooperative groups, students may also...
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What is "The American Dream"?
Students read the story Marriage is a Private Affair and analyze the 'American Dream.' In this American Dream activity, students free write about the American Dream. Students read the story and discuss the themes. Students write a letter...
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One Ring to Rule Them All
Students continue to read Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. In groups, they analyze the different metaphysical aspects of the ring and discuss the characters use of power in the story. As a class, they examine Frodo's reasoning for wanting...
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Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Words: Art, Art History, Language Arts, Creative Writing
Students write a story inspired by Vincent Van Gogh's "Starry Night" and then try their hand at their own rendition of this famous piece of art. In a twist, students incorporate the stories into their paintings.
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Greeting Card to A Character
High schoolers create a greeting card from one character to another after finishing a novel. Individually, they use their imagination to write the paragraph using the text to support their ideas. They share their greeting card with the...
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Making a Movie in our Mind
Pupils participate in visualization exercises to create mental pictures as they read. They discuss silent reading techniques, and observe the teacher modeling how to visualize the beginning of the book Pippi Longstocking. In pairs they...
Bright Hub Education
How to Outline, Plan & Write a Memoir
Get to know each individual through a memoir project. The instructional activity outlined here is a bit vague, but has some promising ideas for graphic organizers to help writers prepare their work. In order to succeed with the...
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Bears, Bears, Bears
First graders, after listening to the teacher read different bear stories, write their own bear story and vote for their favorite one in class.
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Publishing Pupils
Second graders are guided through the writing process and then given time to use the skills they have acquired by writing a story and publishing it using a computer.
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ILLUSTRATING TALES AND FOLKLORE
Seventh graders explore tales, stories and folklore while practicing creative illustration techniques.
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My Black Teddy
Students read "Bonnie the Black Bear"and discuss black bear facts. In teams, they research the internet about black bears. They create their own stories about black bears using three facts from the information they've researched.
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Tell Me a Whopper!
Sixth graders investigate tall tales as a literary genre. They listen to a number of tall tales to discover how exaggeration is used as a story element. They write and publish a tall tale using word processing software. They illustrate...
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Write to Music
Students improve their creative writing skills. In this writing skills lesson, students learn about picture captions, story writing, critiques, poems, reports, letter writing, creative writing, and a rap poem.
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Comparison of Multicultural Literature
Students examine three different versions of "Twas the Night Before Christmas" and complete a comparison activity. Their own version of the poem is created and illustrated in this instructional activity.
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Show And Tell
Have you ever saved your money to buy something you really wanted? Elementary schoolers share how they saved their money for things they wanted, and they bring in one or two items that they bought with their personal savings.
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Pronouns and Clauses
In this pronouns and clauses activity, learners complete a passage using 7 appropriate pronouns, write how many clauses there are in 4 sentences, underline the main clause in each one and write a short story with a beginning, a middle...
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Ugly Bug/Snuggly Bug
Students demonstrate an understanding of rhyming words by creating buggy pictures and a sentence containing rhyming words. They listen to the story, 'Creepy Beetles,' then engage in an activity where they identify the rhyming words.
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It's Raining Meatballs
Students participate in activities to determine their macro process and elaborative process abilities. During macro processes readers organize and summarize ideas as they read. They look at the big picture of the entire text as well as...
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My Favorite Thing to Do
Young scholars realize that a paragraph is a short piece of writing that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Every story, essay, article, or book is like a patchwork quilt made of little paragraphs stitched together
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Hard Word with the Little Red Hen
Students complete a unit using the story of the Little Red Hen to learn the storybook reading format as well as improve their reading and social skills. In this storybook lesson, students complete five lessons using the story of the...
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Suspense-Around
Young scholars participate in round-robin cooperative writing groups to develop a variety of possible stories around a single prompt.
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Writing: Lesson 5
Eighth graders pre-write a story brainstorming things that they want to tell in their story; writing down as many details as possible. They then arrange the details in chronological order and practice several ways to write a narrative.
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The Outsiders
Ninth graders explore middle section of S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders, and complete eight analytical questions to demonstrate understanding of messages in story. Students then watch portion of movie that coincides with chapters read.
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Active Reading: Finding a Conversation Voice
Learners practice reading for comprehension and understanding. In groups, students read, out loud, using a conversation voice. They predict and discuss the story as it unfolds.