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Teach Ancient Greece!
“We alone regard a man who takes no interest in public affairs, not as a harmless but as a useless character.” Pericles’ comment, part of a funeral speech, sets the tone for a unit study of Ancient Greece. A series of activities...
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Presenting Your Case
Students research a famous person of their choice in this lesson. They research the person's life, feelings, and character through a series of written activities. They compile their research into a creative project called a character's...
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Facing Obstacles with Creativity and Humor
Students explore how to overcome obstacles. In this perseverance lesson, students discuss effective strategies that could be used when faced with an obstacle. Students discuss why having a plan, teamwork and perseverance are important....
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My Name Is Me!
Students write about themselves. In this personal writing lesson, students write their name vertically down a sheet of paper and think of a self descriptive word that matches each letter of their name. Students write a descriptive...
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Understanding Story Elements-Who, What, Where
Students create a rap using story details. In this creative writing instructional activity, students examine the use of rap lyrics to list important details of stories. They view a video example, and use their notes to create...
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Picture a Character
How would Jean-Etiénne Liotard paint the characters from "The Little Mermaid?" What would the main character from "The Little Match Girl" look like from Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes' point of view? After examining various paintings...
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Dr. Seuss Author Study
Students listen to a story, then use the same format to write a class book.
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Gingerbread Baby's Point of View #8
Read the story Gingerbread Baby and use these various activities to connect to grammar, art, and point of view. In one activity, learners create character masks. They practice writing verbs on the back of the masks to tell what each...
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Creative Dialogues en Espanol
Students create a character that could be included in a dialog from stories about Isabel. They use a Venn Diagram to compare and contrast the characters. Students work in groups to create a new character and draw an illustration. They...
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Writing Japanese Stories (Grades 6-8)
Students listen to several Japanese stories and write their own Japanese-style stories, which they share with the class.
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Short Story Framework
The class gets creative after listening to a short story containing a definitive structure. They are required to think about character, relationship, and setting, while attempting to show rather than tell, in their writing. Dialogue,...
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Yakety-Yak
Do talk back! The transcript of one side of a telephone conversation launches a study of dialogue. Class members imagine the response of the speaker on the other side of the conversation and record these responses on the provided...
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The Catcher in the Rye: Biopoem
Here’s a catchy way to study characterization. Readers of The Catcher in the Rye select a character from Salinger’s classic tale to use as the subject of a biopoem. A teacher sample is provided.
Novelinks
The House on Mango Street: List-Group-Label
Encourage close reading of the text and a focus on how Sandra Cisneros' develops her characters with an activity that asks teams to sort, group, and label character descriptions from The House on Mango Street.
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Fairy Tales Unit Ideas
Students listen to children's fairy tales and watch them on a video. Afterward, they list the heroes from each story. Students write a short paragraph about a typical day for the hero. Students dress up like their character and give a...
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Call of the Wild: After-reading Response Strategy
Readers select a character from Call of the Wild, record their responses to a series of prompts in a spiral notebook, and use details from the novel to support their thinking. The spirals are then used as source material to support...
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Art Self-Assessment
Reflection is a wonderful way to understand yourself as a learner or as an artist. Kids write a one-paragraph analysis of their own self-portrait. They focus on style, character traits, and self characterization.
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Civil War Diaries
Fifth graders examine excerpts from a diary of a Confederate soldier and his experiences in a Union prison camp. After receiving character cards, they write diary entries from the perspectives of their Civil War identity. As an...
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So Foul and Fair a Play
Students watch various interpretations of Shakespeare's Macbeth in film. In groups, they examine the setting, characters, music and sequence. They compare and contrast the various films and discuss the differences. They write an essay on...
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What Really Happened?
Sixth graders recreate scenes from the theories about the disappearance of Amelia Earhart. In this history and theatre lesson plan, 6th graders review the story of Earhart using a flip chart. Students work on one act plays to depict one...
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Writing Comics (3+)
Students examine comic strips and evaluate the techniques used to create them. They design their own comics as a continuation of the ones they read, or they create their own characters.
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Celebrating Women: Toni Morrison
Students research Toni Morrison's life, work as a writer, and major contributions to the field of literature; students choose one of her novels to read, & perform a scene from it; each group member writes an autobiographical essay...
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Shape Shifters- Trees and the Environment
Students make a tree sculpture. In this trees and the environment lesson, students learn about the parts of a tree, discuss what a tree needs in order to grow, find images of trees in art and nature, use various materials to create a...
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Further Activities with Language
High schoolers chose a favorite passage from a Shakespeare play. They write a letter from one character to another in a novel they have just read. They take a scene from a movie and write it in Shakespearean language.