Tenth graders explore Shakespearean comedy. They read and discuss A Midsummer Night's Dream and create a soundtrack, complete with CD cover, for the play.

Young scholars research the ANCSA and report from small groups about what they read.

Learners discover the "recipe" for a thunderstorm. they discuss the "ingrediants" needed to create a thunderstorm and then research a related topic (radar, convection, etc.) and create a webpage about that topic.

Fourth graders are read the book "Kissing Coyotes". During the story, they make predictions about what they believe might happen next. After the story, they create their own story using their imagination and draw illustrations.

Students examine levels of language difficulty for different audiences. They explore how to simplify texts to suit a younger audience. Students use a thesaurus to find synonyms. Students select a news article to rewrite. They create...

Young scholars express their preferences when discuss different types of employment. They examine their do and don't lists for going on an interview. They practice the use of prepositions.

Students familiarize themselves with high-ranking Bush administration officials who have recently resigned and with various elements of political cartoons. THey research the role of the attorney general and the issues that surrounding...

Students explore evolutionary concepts in cartoons and lab activities. They describe and explain evolutionary concepts featured in a cartoon and participate in laboratory activities.

Students practice visualization through a fantasy trip and test their powers of observation by blindly identifying their own potatoes.

Seventh graders read Mania Magee as a shared literature experience. This lesson plan presents some ideas to use after certain chapters in the book as a way of supplementing student learning and involvement in the story.

Students brainstorm and list qualities that they would look for in a president; students rank qualities in order of importance.

Students visit the links on the blog site to learn about class wikis. In this technology integration lesson, students visit the links to view class wikis.

This lesson leads high school young scholars through a greater understanding of the conventions of the literary device of "Humor," through a study of Mark Twain and the story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." A...

Humor is not the first thing people associate with Poe, but this essay offers a look at the humor that Poe attempted in his writing. Good for a different look at an often-studied author. Offers a bibliography and links to online texts.

This essay discusses the effects of humor in fiction, and provides some advice to writers on how to incorporate humor in their writing.

Eight slides introducing different types of humor in writing including irony, caricature, satire, wit, blunders, hyperbole, jokes, practical jokes, and puns.

Emmy Award-winning comedy writer Cheri Steinkellner offers a few tips and tricks for finding the funny in your writing. [5:07]

In this activity, students will complete humorous fill-in-the-blank prompts. After students complete each blank, students will view an automatically-generated story that contains their sentences organized in ways that will be funny.

The writer will assume the role of a living creature (like an arthropod) or an abstraction (like a fraction). Writers will do research on what they have chosen as their roles, and learn new facts about these roles. The writer will...

This site includes a summary of these lesson plans about humor, and a narrative on humor in writing to precede them. Discusses writings by Benjamin Franklin.

After sharing Margie Palatini's charming "bad-situation-that-only-gets-worse tale", Tub-boo-boo, writers will plan a story about a humorous household accident that gets worse before it gets better. Borrowing Palatini's exciting idea from...

Use this lesson to study the lives of Mark Twain and Will Rogers. Analyze the writing styles of both authors, and identify the men as humorists who reflected and changed American culture.

Learn about Franklin's career as a writer and about his particular brand of humor in this five-part essay. Includes examples from his letters and from "Poor Richard's Almanack."

In this activity, students will complete humorous fill-in-the-blank prompts. After students complete each blank, students will view an automatically-generated story that contains their sentences organized ways that will be funny.