Curated OER
Character Development Through Song
Students use songs to analyze their sense of identity and self-worth. In groups, they discuss and explore their own character development and discover how far they have come in recent years. They also identify the positive and negative...
Curated OER
Poem in Your Pocket Day: Ideas for Celebrating
First instituted in New York City in 2002 and recognized nationwide in 2009, "Poem in Your Pocket Day" is part of National Poetry Month (April) and celebrates poetry in everyday life. A brief news story includes 9 ideas about how to...
Curated OER
Whose Language is it Anyway: Afrikaans in South Africa
Afrikaans, a language derived from Dutch, is spoken by almost 10 million people! Introduce your scholars to South Africa, discuss the evolution of Afrikaans, and look at Apartheid.
Cloud Front
Grammar Camp Worksheet Packet
Whip your students' grammar skills into shape with this series of practice worksheets. Touching on all eight parts of speech, these exercises challenge learners to identify the relationships between different words...
Curated OER
New York State Language Arts Test Grade 4
Quiz your class with this New York state language arts test. The test is composed of several informational and fictional passages and 28 multiple choice questions. The questions are based mostly on reading comprehension.
Virginia Department of Education
Researching Information
Give your junior high researchers a clear concept of how to go about starting their research paper with the resources available in this exercise. Learners develop an idea to research, and spend time in the library or computer lab...
EngageNY
Mid-Unit 2 Assessment: On-Demand Informational Writing
Lesson 7 focuses on building academic vocabulary and writing an explanatory letter with supported textual evidence. For the first five minutes of the instructional activity, the educator reminds the class of how to read and refer to the...
Curated OER
Teaching "A Week in the Woods"
The book, A Week in the Woods is the focus of the very interesting language arts lesson presented here. After the book has been read, learners engage in study of certain parts of the book in order to gain a better understanding of how...
Dream of a Nation
Creating Awareness through Action Oriented Writing and Research
Middle schoolers aren't too young to feel strongly about politics, social issues, consumer rights, or environmental problems. Demonstrate the first steps toward social change with a project about action-oriented writing. Eighth...
Curated OER
Characterization
A 46-slide presentation focuses on ways to describe characters in stories, how to create story characters, and how to show a character's personality in a student-created story. The colorful and engaging slides provide lots of great ideas...
Curated OER
Plot Development and Conflict
Students explore plot development and how conflicts are resolved. In this plot development and conflict lesson, students discuss antonyms and list the ones they find in their story. Students complete online activities and write a summary...
Curated OER
Finding Main Ideas
In this reading worksheet, young scholars learn to identify the main idea in a newspaper article. Students read an article about police dogs and answer 2 questions. Then young scholars choose 3 newspaper articles on their own and...
Florida Department of Education
Phonemic Awareness
Build your library of strategies and activities for teaching phonemic awareness with the ideas provided in this resource. Described here are five different activities to try out with your class.
Curated OER
Developing Writing Skills Through Japanese Folk Music
Students listen to Japanese folk songs to get inspired to create a writing piece about Japan. In this writing lesson, students use primary and secondary sources to add information about Japan.
Maryland Department of Education
The Concept of Identity Lesson 1: Close Reading/Socratic Seminar
John Knowles' A Separate Peace provides readers with an opportunity to develop their close reading and analytical skills as they look for what Knowles feels are the factors that shape our identity.
Curated OER
A Monster of a Metaphor
What do Jeep advertisements and Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath have in common? They both employ the art of the extended metaphor! Using the Six-Trait Writing model, learners begin to work on their own extended metaphors. Development...
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 14: Dedication
Connect Martin Luther King Jr's famous speech, "I Have a Dream," to The Cay by Theodore Taylor. Taylor refers to the speech in his dedication, which creates a natural segue into talking about the speech and how it relates to the novel....
Dream of a Nation
Writing Interdisciplinary Essay
The Grapes of Wrath. The Jungle. Native Son. The Things They Carried. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian. To address a current social, political, economic, or environmental issue, class groups pair the reading of a...
Dream of a Nation
Writing an Analytic Essay
After researching an issue introduced in Tyson Miller's Dream of a Nation: Inspiring Ideas for a Better America, writers develop an original thesis statement and craft an analytic essay using evidence collected in their research.
Dream of a Nation
Read, Watch, Write for Pathos, Logos and Ethos
Encourage your young citizens to make a difference. Using Tyson Miller's Dream of a Nation: Inspiring Ideas for a Better America as a starting point, class members watch documentaries, investigate issues, and then write letters to...
Maryland Department of Education
The Concept of Identity Lesson 7: Logical Fallacies
What are the effects of competition in an academic environment? The competition between the main characters in A Separate Peace motivates a series of activities that asks readers to take a stance on competition, and then to develop a...
EngageNY
Grade 11 ELA Module 1: Unit 2, Lesson 9
Hamlet has an unusual take on the criminal justice system when he decides to determine his uncle's guilt by staging a play. With the resource, scholars continue analyzing Hamlet's third soliloquy from Act 2.2 of Shakespeare's Hamlet....
Curated OER
Quiet on the Set!
In pairs learners perform a silent skit portraying relationships between two known characters from a popular book or a play for their classmates. Next, the class will read and discuss a NYTimes article about a film school in the Bronx...
Curated OER
Poetry Writing Unit: Writing a Film Poem
Film poems? To concluded a poetry unit, writers select one of their own poems and create a film that brings to life the sounds and images of their work. Included with the detailed unit plan are daily lessons, student examples, a list of...