Young readers listen to the story The Three Little Pigs, and discuss what abnormal characteristics the pigs and the wolf have. They relate these characteristics to personification, and practice writing sentences using personification.

Ninth graders analyze a fantasy art map by Jeremy Anderson, paying careful attention to the way the topographic features of the land are represented. They create a similar map of Sacramento that includes topographical features as well as...

Students examine cereal and snack boxes and then create magnets and/or pins using the Pop Art demonstrated in these pieces. This multi-level instructional activity emphasizes the differences between commercial art examples and fine art...

Students explore the economic, political, racial, and religious roots of Manifest Destiny. They read articles and analyze how the concept influenced the nation's westward expansion. Students discover the motivations and expectations of...

Students explore poetry using American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project. They compose their own unque "found poetry" based on the stories found in the collection.

Students are shown a stress management lesson using ROPES format. The lesson consist of Review: A pretest determining current stress levels. Overview: Discussion of goals and objectives of session. Presentation: Discussion of stress,...

Middle schoolers read a poem and complete a TPCASTT chart. They make a prediction about the title (T) , paraphrase each line (P), identify poetic devices and nuances (C-connotation), explore mood and tone (A-attitude), point out shifts...

Students read a novel and write short journal entries about the characters, setting and interesting facts. Using email, they share their responses to the novel with other students at a different school. Student also create slide shows...

Challenge your class with this comprehensive list of literary vocabulary words. Learners take a pre-test, look up definitions, come up with an example, and then take a post-test. You might use this prior to a unit about poetic devices in...

Develop the writing skills of your high school class. Writers consider their personal style and voice, read selections by other authors, and then write pieces that challenge them to experiment with their own style.

For this using vivid images worksheet, students identify vivid images and analyze their effectiveness in John Deever's "Mr. John and the Day of Knowledge." Students then write rich images for their classmates to imagine.

Combining visual and language arts, here is a resource that prompts middle schoolers to write stories based on pictures of their surroundings. They use digital cameras to take pictures of favorite areas in the school. Next, they choose...

High schoolers identify the distinction between literal and figurative language with a focus on metaphors. They complete a metaphor analysis chart, then practice expanding metaphors by composing their own comparisons of elements of the...

Students use NASA satellite data to see cloud cover over Africa.  In this seasons lesson students access data and import it into Excel. 

Discuss with your oceanographers what forces cause nearshore upwelling and downwelling. Display a line of wind vectors alongside a graph of the temperatures so that they can discover whether or not they are related. Discussion questions...

After each of three viewings of a 45-second video, aspiring writers employ vivid adjectives and precise, strong verbs to "show, don't tell." First they compose a single sentence, then three, and finally a five-sentence paragraph. Repeat...

Sophomores record the definitions and examples of a series of literary terms and then create their own example of the word. Designed as an assessment, the presentation could also be used as an introduction or as a review. 

People who pen poetry positively need to know basic tenets and terms of poetry, like alliteration and consonance, for example. These and other terms are define and illustrated. Then viewers are given an object and asked to craft a...

Engage your class in art analysis of Indian Look-Alike by Melanie Yazzie. Using this work of art as inspiration, writers compose a poem or short story. After a peer review session, the teacher conveys information about the work of art as...

Young adults convey a message about a chosen health issue through research and poster production. This creative assignment could be an inspirational close to a health unit. 

How does poetry differ from other forms of writing? Class members view two writing samples, decide which one is a poem, and then identify the criteria they used to distinguish between the two samples.  

Kids create cool clauses selecting a single starting sound. Ah, alliteration.

Hurricanes, typhoons, and tropical cyclones are the same type of storm, but their names change based on where they happen. Scholars use a computer simulation to learn about hurricanes. Then they hypothesize ideas to prevent hurricanes...

Looking for a resource to introduce homeschoolers and other out-of-class learners to the elements of poetry? Check out this packet that defines and illustrates important poetry terms.