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Latin Culture Through Art and Literature
Eleventh graders participate in a lecture on the history of Latin Americans and the role of Latin-American women writers. As a class, they read a story together and identify what lessons the narrator gained throughout the story. In...
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The Great Gatsby
Eleventh graders investigate the concept of the American Dream. They use the novel "The Great Gatsby" as an example from literature. Students brainstorm in order to define the American Dream.
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Foundations
Students investigate the history of literature in America by looking at the types of genres first read in the United States. They look at the foundations of how the original colonists had the intention of transmitting religious and moral...
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Colonial Living: A Look at the Arts, Crafts, History, and Literature of Early Americans
Sixth graders examine the different aspects of life in Colonial America. At home, they make traditional colonial recipes to share with the class. In groups, they read a book about the purpose and act of quilting and create their own...
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Other Voices - Latino and Chicano Literature and Identity in America
Twelfth graders analyze "Dedication" and "Child of the Americas" using a double-journal format. They compare responses and infer meaning from the connotations of select images in the poems write a paragraph describing the importance of...
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Harriet The Spy
Fourth graders investigate the style of diary writing as its own genre of literature. They read Harriet The Spy in order to have a text for this literature study. Students use the skill of prediction to preview the story, and then...
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Literature Response for Home-School Connections: Poetry
First graders practice reading and writing for a variety of purposes and audiences. Ten lessons on one page.
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Children's Literature and African American Culture
Third graders examine various stories and poems and identify characteristics that make each individual unique. After analyzing the readings, they create their own personality poems to accompany self-portrait drawings. The poems and...
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The Death of Old Woman Kelema
Students read various parts of "The Death of Old Woman Kelema". Next, they listen to the author's description of her writing process. In groups, they compare and contrast funerals in Mali with those in the United States. They also...
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What About Us? Women in the Civil War
Pupils research the role of women in the Civil War. In this Civil War unit, students research the role women played during the war. This unit includes eight different activities including vocabulary, writing prompts and a literature...
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A Picture’s Worth a Thousand Words
Students examine historical photographs and discuss what the photograph reveals and how they can contribute to writing. In this response to literature students choose a photograph and develop a paragraph around it.
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The City in Black and White and Color: An interdisciplinary approach to teaching life in the city using literature, social studies, art, and photography.
Students design an artistic and literary collage of contemporary urban life that seeks to interpret, analyze, and evaluate its mettle. They integrate their impressions of urban life with established views, thereby enriching their...
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The Underground Railroad
Fourth graders participate in a literature circle after reading a book about the Underground Railroad. They discuss their selected book with their literature circle group, and complete a handout about their role in the circle. Students...
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Literature: It's a Mad, Mad Macbeth
Students determine how the themes expressed in Macbeth are also applicable to contemporary society. They complete a series of written assignments demonstrating their comprehension of theme, content, and interpretation of the play....
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Women in the Civil War
Pupils study the Civil War era in the US with a concentration on women during this time through literature and biographies. They create a timeline or multimedia presentation as one product of this series of lessons.
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Sherlock Holmes Database Investigation
Pupils conduct a character study using the literature of Sherlock Holmes. They use a database with different cases that need to be solved. Students use the computer software to work through a list of suspects and match them with the crimes.
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Database Lesson Plan
Students add themselves in to a story. In this literature lesson, students listen to the story Miss Nelson is Missing by Harry Allard and James Marshall. They pull out certain words in the story and add their own to create a new...
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Follow the Light
Students investigate the role of lighthouses in navigation and practice the use of cardinal directions through reading activities, discussion, locating geographical features, and mapping lighthouses along the east coast of the United...
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Opening Doors to Social Studies with Children's Literature
Third graders use the Decision Tree strategy to brainstorm ideas about two decisions that must be made. They predict what will happen in the rest of the story. Students discuss the time period the story takes place in. They study the...
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Under the Tongan Sun
Students read the story "Under the Tongan Sun" by Tina Martin. In groups, they use the text of the story to answer comprehension questions. They work together to identify the cultural differences between the United States and Tonga. To...
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The Bracelet: Five Senses
Young scholars investigate the 5 senses by reading children's literature. For this descriptive writing lesson, students read the story The Bracelet by Yoshiko Uchida, analyzing the story and characters as they go. Young scholars identify...
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Re-Read The Mitten
Students utilize their reading comprehension by analyzing a book with their class. For this children's literature lesson, students read the story The Mitten by Jan Brett and discuss the imagery and characters in the story. Students...
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Louisa May Alcott: her life, her times and her literature
Students explore one of America's favorite classic novels, 'Little Women'. They develop an interest in classics, study the author's life and discover which elements of her family history she incorporates into her work. They show how...
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Where in the World is Flat Stanley?
Second graders analyze the proper form of a friendly letter and send flat Stanley letters all over the United States. In this letter writing lesson, 2nd graders read the book Flat Stanley by Jeff Brown and create their own Flat...