What a lovely way to incorporate artwork into your language arts instructional activity. View artwork in illustrated manuscript pages, depicting insects, animals, plants, flowers, and ornate writing in the Getty Museum. Practice using...

Figurative language is the focus in the book Teach Us, Amelia Bedelia. After reading Peggy Parish's book, class members dramatize idioms from the text, using dramatic strategies such as characterization, exaggeration, and...

Invite your class to investigate racism and civil rights by analyzing the great Dr. Martin Luther King's speech. Your learners will read the words from the "I Have a Dream" speech and analyze the political and racial overtones. They will...

Animals oftentimes elicit various characteristics which make them symbolic or representative of human feeling, action, or emotion. The class creates horse characters out of clay to show character action and symbolism. This is a great...

Students practice using prepositions by writing on the tracing of a human.  In this parts of speech lesson, students create a giant poster using the tracing of a classmate's body and fill in the outline using prepositions in places...

Art is a great way to convey or express an idea. Learners choose an idiom, draw it, and use transfer paper to create photograms. They discuss how why they chose the phrase they did, and how they expressed that idea through their...

Young scholars utilize the Internet to research figures of speech used in poetry and poetry terms

Students, in groups, identify the origins of a number of transportation idioms. They search for current transportation idioms to have a partner explain.

Class members may "think themselves accurs'd" when they first hear of an assignment that asks them to create a motivational speech. After studying the Saint Crispin's Day speech from Shakespeare's Henry V; however, they will count...

As part of a study of how visual metaphors are used in set design, class members examine an image of designer Josef Svoboda's 3-D scale model for the opera Idomeneo, re` di Creta. They then find another example that employs a visual...

Bring writing to life with this lesson plan in which elementary and middle schoolers create a display of the imagery they identify in a series of Gary Paulsen books. They read the suggested materials, identify imagery and descriptive...

Fifth graders write or dance a simile to show the relationship between two unlike nouns. In this simile and grammar lesson, 5th graders explore dance movements and identify smooth and sharp energy examples. Students review...

Sixth graders answer questions about "From a Railway Carriage." They discuss different poetical forms. They work together to write a poem about travel.

Learners view artwork in manuscript pages depicting insects, animals, plants, flowers, and ornate writing, such as those found in the Mira calligraphiae monumenta in the Getty Museum.

Learners read the poem T'was the Night Before Christmas, and then partner with another student to complete a poem of their own based on the original. The new poem has missing words and students fill in the missing parts of speech like a...

Students explore biology by researching birds in class. In this raven identification instructional activity, students utilize the Internet to identify the anatomy, habits and habitat of ravens. Students write descriptive paragraphs about...

Learners follow directions in the ABC of Symmetry to make a butterfly which shows a line of symmetry.

Students investigate soliloquies. In this performing arts lesson, students discuss figurative language within soliloquies and then perform a soliloquy to the rest of the class.

Students research the viewpoints of famous Americans, and then write commencement speeches reflecting these viewpoints to be delivered to high school graduates of today.

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...

Learners examine clay animation. In this technology lesson, students use the Internet to investigate the history of clay animation. Learners use story boards and clay figures to create their own "animation."

Learners use the music of Bruce Springsteen to learn literature techniques.