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"Positive Negative Designs"
Once in a while you need a quick, fun activity to add interest to your classroom. Your kids will flip over the effects they'll be able to make as they explore positive and negative designs. They'll use a cutting technique that results in...
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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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Spiro Mounds; Oklahoma's Past Indian History
Students create an understanding of Oklahoma's past.
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Composing Music
Learners compose music with musical instruments, and write the proper notation for the songs they have created.
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The Crucible
Learners create a movie of a scene from The Crucible upon completion of reading the book. They assume a variety of roles in the film production.
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Learning Log
A simple idea, this exercise will help young learners practice metacognitive and language arts skills. At the end of each day of school, have each member of your class record, in their own words, what they learned that day. Merely...
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Prop Box
What other uses can you brainstorm for a key? What about a pair of sunglasses? Bring a bag of props into your classroom and have learners create different uses for a selection of objects. Then, after everyone has shared, translate the...
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Re-Name That Tune
Learners select a familiar children's tune and redesign it by rewriting the lyrics, writing a play, a dance, a storybook or a puppet show. Students work in groups and share their finished project with their classmates.
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Using a "Before Reading" Organizer with Informational Text
Lead your students in creating a graphic organizer that uses the titles and subtitles of an informational text. Your class should recognize and use features of narrative and informational text before connecting and remembering the main...
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Coast-to-Coast Book Design-Part 1: What is a book?
In this first of four lessons on book design, learners are introduced to the vocabulary of book design through the use of bookwalks and a non-linear PowerPoint presentation in game-show (Jeopardy!) format.
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All About Me
Kids almost always want to share the things that make them special. They create and deliver an autobiographical multimedia presentation using step-by-step outlines to plan their content. This is a great "All About Me" instructional...
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Character Sketches
Students are introduced to the types of characters found in short stories. They read a short story in class and produce sketches of the protagonist and antagonist. Finally, they create their own characters and write about them in their...
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Character Baseball Cards
Create baseball cards for literary characters with this lesson plan. It introduces students to baseball cards, their components (stats, picture, etc.), and prompts them to draft and publish their own cards based on figures from...
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The Nifty Fifty- Facts and Figures
Students explore an assigned state. In this United States geography lesson plan, students identify facts and figures related to a particular state. Students use the Internet for research and create a PowerPoint presentation displaying...
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Exploring Contrasting Story Elements Through Tapestry and Poetry
Young thinkers view two narrative art tapestries and study the images included that tell a story about the Roman Emperor Constantine. As they examine the details of the tapestries, pupils use a Venn Diagram to record the similarities and...
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Write a Story
Elementary writers will create short stories with their classmates' help, publishing the books using computer programs. The first learner writes a sentence to start the story, and each classmate adds a sentence to the story. The original...
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Word Wake
Put your common writing errors to rest with this resource, which prompts high schoolers to create eulogies and tombstones for overused and incorrect words. They work on correcting common errors in spelling and usage mistakes in their own...
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Sunday School Inspiration Lessons
Many activities related to the Chrisitan religion are included in this lesson about storytelling; students create their own Bible related art from stickers, stamps, t-shirts and hats. Puppets also help to to retell Bible stories and...
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Analyzing Word Use Through Guided Wordle
Even though this activity is just a basic way to review verb usage, it takes a novel approach. First, pupils identify verbs that they use too often in their writing, and then they create a Wordle. Wordle is a website that provides...
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Children's Picture Books
Fifth graders will enhance their typing skills and practice using Pages, a software for Mac computers, by writing their own children's book. Note: This lesson plan refers to a template that is not included, however, you can adapt this...
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"Graffiti Names"
Graffiti art is fun, provides an opportunity for self expression, and captures the essences of society in a specific time and place. The class gets a crash course in graffiti as they watch the PBS video The History of American Graffiti,...
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Zany Wire Sculpture
Young artists create a freestanding 3-dimensional sculpture using wire and modeled "clay" pieces. This immensely creative and engaging lesson should get your kids excited, because the medium is unusual to work with. Everything you need...
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Idioms in Everyday Language
Students create an iPhoto book exhibiting a variety of idioms that describe feelings. They take photos using a digital camera that show students exhibiting the feelings explained by the idioms.
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Vivacious Vocabulary
Students practice looking up the definitions of words using a dictionary. They put the defintion of the word into their own words. They create a PowerPoint slideshow to show illustrations related to their vocabulary words. Using the...