K12 Reader
Nouns Verbs: Write it Both Ways
A instructional activity gives scholars the opportunity to take five words and use them as a noun and a verb. Changing the verb tenses and making nouns singular or plural work to compose a grammatically correct sentence.
Curated OER
Lesson Four: Comparatives and Superlatives
Put on your best smile, or a least a better one, for this lesson on superlatives and comparatives. English language learners first fill out a graphic organizer by finding other people in the class who are taller than they are, shorter...
Southern Nevada Regional Professional Development Program
A Mini lesson on Semicolons
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" serves as an exemplar for a mini-lesson on semicolons. Working alone or in small groups, class members first circle all the semicolons in the letter, and then consider how this...
Odell Education
Making Evidence-Based Claims: Grade 9
Sorry, Charlie. Scholars take a close look at Apology by Plato. Activities analyzing the text help pupils understand, make, organize, and write about claims. Learners work in groups, complete claim tools, and evaluate thinking by filling...
Have Fun Teaching
Inferences (2)
Encourage young readers to use their prior knowledge, as well as text clues, to draw inferences from text. Provide them with this learning exercise that asks them to record a passage, the background information they already have, the...
Curated OER
Understanding Tiananmen Square
William Bell's Forbidden City is used as the basis of a study of China, Chinese culture and government, and especially of the events in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Class members select a topic for Internet research and then prepare a...
Hawaiʻi State Department of Education
When We Are A Story
Drama and story elements go hand-in-hand. Have the class dive into a dramatic play to show character intention, conflict resolution, main events, and the dialogue in a Hawaiian folk tale. They read the story, then group-up to...
Hawaiʻi State Department of Education
Chiaroscuro Apple
I absolutely love this idea. Kids explore the chiaroscuro technique as they draw, then bite, then write about an apple. They discuss chiaroscuro, depth, shade, perspective, and texture. Then they draw their apples, write a descriptive...
Public Media for Northern California
An Educator’s Guide to Teaching Gun Control Issues | The Lowdown
The topic of gun control is vast, controversial, and difficult to introduce to young scholars. This gem of a resource covers both sides of the issue and provides topic background, various multimedia and print resources, analysis...
Haut Gap Middle School
Root Words
Scholars demonstrate their knowledge of root words aqua and aud, and develop vocabulary skills by completing of a chart, handout, and worksheet using creative thinking skills, a dictionary, and a thesaurus.
Curated OER
User Friendly
Students explore how consumers have become as proficient in computer technology as specialists were a decade ago. They create and conduct a test to determine the proficiencies of people in their school community.
Curated OER
Elements of Fables
Students explore the attributes of fables. In this literature lesson, students read several fables and identify the moral lesson, characterization, and figurative language in each. Students then retell their favorite fables in their own...
Southern Nevada Regional Professional Development Program
“Just a Minute” Focus: Adapting Speech
A little bit complicated, but a whole lot of fun. Show your class an episode of the British television game show Just a Minute. After an explanation of the rules (no repetition, hesitation, or deviation) groups develop topics, based on...
Curated OER
Baseball Stories, Cards and Interviews
Everyone can be an MVP! Young learners create their own baseball cards about themselves in this autobiographical instructional activity. They use information about their lives to create a baseball trading card. They make flash cards...
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 15: Theme
Build understanding of theme with an activity designed for The Cay and the Common Core. Small groups or pairs use graphic organizers to determine themes, find and record related details from the text, and formulate theme statements. In...
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 6 Close Reading
Look back at the third chapter of The Cay with your class. Pupils will conduct a close reading, taking a second look at a chunk of text and responding to a series of text-dependent questions. Wrap up with an analytical writing prompt...
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 11: Setting
Encourage your learners to examine the setting in Theodore Taylor's The Cay. Pupils work in small groups to put together a description of the setting before reading two more chapters of the book. They use their double-entry journals to...
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 5
Building on the previous activity in this series of lesson seeds, this plan focuses on the use of dialect in Theodore Taylor's novel, The Cay. Class members examine specific lines of text, use their reading journals to respond to the...
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 3
If you're looking to set your class up for writing effective arguments, try out this idea. While originally created with freedom as a guiding idea, the activity could easily be adapted for other themes. As a class, create a chart of...
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 1
Make a study of the First Amendment and its relationship to freedom. Pupils rewrite the amendment and discuss the central idea before focusing on a specific phrase. After discussing, class members write a journal entry about the included...
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 2
Use Langston Hughes's poem, "Words Like Freedom," to explore the concepts of freedom and liberty. Learners read the poem, determine the theme, and use the provided graphic organizer to examine the connotative and denotative meanings of...
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....
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 12: Story Event
Focus on plot and the impact-specific events in The Cay. Class members use their double-entry journals, created in a previous lesson in this series, to record their thinking about the guiding question as they read chapters 15 through 17....
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 19: Synthesis
Wrap up your unit on The Cay with an engaging argumentative writing assignment. Writers must decide if they believe The Cay should be banned. The resource includes links to several articles, which have been addressed and examined in...