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Give Me Some Expression!
Work to improve oral expression while reading aloud. Young scholars read sentence strips, changing their volume, speed, and tone to match what is written, making the sentence more meaningful. They read an entire story with a partner who...
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Introduction To Literary Analysis
Explore the fascinating ways in which authors use specific literary devices to create interesting and realistic texts. Using non-fiction articles with the subject of rogue waves, an excerpt from The Perfect Storm, by Sebastian Junger,...
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Express Yourself
How do you make a story exciting? Teach young readers how to change your pitch, tone, and mood as you read. After modeling the various ways you can change your expression, have small pairs or groups work together to give it a shot!
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Much Ado About Nothing: Guided Imagery Exercise
“Be glad that all things sort so well.” To make text-to-self connections to Shakespeare’s play, class members engage in a guided imagery exercise prior to reading Act IV, scene i of Much Ado About Nothing (the wedding of Claudio and...
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Lesson Two: Writing Letters in Code
Combine your friendly letter lesson plan, grammar lesson plan, and technology lesson plan with this fun activity! Young writers compose letters to friends, and then convert the text to Webdings font. Their friends then decode the letter...
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Connotation and Denotation:
Eighth graders investigate the effect that connotations can have on writing. They are shown examples to build background knowledge before attempting the exercise. They finish by writing a paragraph to practice what they have learned.
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Essential Elements of Habitat
First graders compare their local area with the Belize landscape. They construct maps of the school area, adding descriptive information. They write haiku poems about their favorite outside places.
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Counting in Espanol
Students create a mini-book with the Spanish numbers 0-10, then compare and contrast the English numbers to the new Spanish numbers.
Computer Science Unplugged
Phylogenetics
Introduce your class to the concept of creating phylogenetic trees by playing a game of Telephone. Participants create a mixed-up message and through the use of distance matrices, the evolution of the message is recreated.
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"I am a pirate with a wooden leg": Stomping Iambic Pentameter
What is blank verse? Iambic pentameter? Meter? Use the attached document to review these ideas with your middle schoolers. This plan has learners get up and stomp to iambic pentameter, which is a fun change from just clapping the...
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Reading Research!
Students investigate the life of an animal and how it responds to winter. The lesson's focus is on reading and research skills using pictures to assist in the understanding of the information presented.
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Freewriting: Exploring Everybody's Favorite Topic
Students engage in the practice of freewriting to improve expressing written thoughts. Then the process of editing takes place to solidify the practice of the writing process.
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Author's Day
Have your learners choose an author to study. One resource link gives a list of approved authors. Scholars read at least three works produced by that author and produce three separate book reports as well as a two-page author report....
Maine Content Literacy Project
Setting in "Hills Like White Elephants"
Continue your study of the short story with the next lesson in this fourteen-lesson series. After wrapping up a study of "Hills Like White Elephants" through a quiz and discussion of the setting, learners are introduced to the final...
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Pass It Down
Students in varying grades work cooperatively to create a living museum of items that have been "passed down" through generations. They give a brief oral presentation showing their object (or a picture of it) and describing its history...
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Virtual Field Trip
Are we there yet? Young trip planners learn about their state and plan a trip. They will select sites to see in three cities in their state, and record associated costs in a spreadsheet. While this was originally designed as a...
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Bradford England
Students explore the locality and diversity of culture within the Bradford District of England. Through map activities and discussion, they identify the major forms of transport, people and places in the region. Students compare and...
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Style and Voice
Develop the writing skills of your high school class. Writers consider their personal style and voice, read selections by other authors, and then write pieces that challenge them to experiment with their own style.
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Dancing Fast, Medium and Slow
Second graders practice dance using different speeds of music and types of movement. In this dance lesson, 2nd graders view a clip of tap dancing and analyze the speed of music in coordinating with the speed of dance movements. Students...
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How Bear Lost His Tale: Storytelling
In this storytelling instructional activity, children practice re-telling the story of "How Bear Lost His Tale", review and write out the story sequence, and learn about homophones like tail/tale, sail/sale, etc. Extension activities for...
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Add Awesome Alliteration to Your Writing
Students explore alliteration. In this writing lesson, students read the book Thank You for the Thistle and create sentences with alliteration. Students create an alphabet booklet with alliteration.
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Writing with Alliteration
Young scholars read Thank You for the Thistle and understand what alliteration is. In this alliteration activity, students write sentences using alliteration. Young scholars choose a letter of the alphabet and the class writes an...
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Goldilocks and the Three Bears
Students analyze classic children's stories by creating story maps. In this children's literature instructional activity, students read Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and practice retelling the story with picture cards that need...
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Printing Practice Letter P
In this printing worksheet, students trace 4 uppercase letter P's. The first box provides arrows that guide students in tracing the letter.