Students explore the Tamil language. They listen to parts of a story read in English, Hindi and Tamil. Tamil word cards are matched with their English equivalent. Practice saying basic Tamil words daily within the lesson.

Students discover enunciation and alliteration by reading tongue twisters in class.  In this language arts lesson, students listen and repeat some of the classic childhood tongue twisters along with their teacher.  Students...

Improve writing skills using methods from Robert Gay's Writing Through Reading; Gay espouses reproducing the work of successful writers to build the ability to convey original ideas effectively. Young writers transcribe, paraphrase,...

Young scholars examine how body language and verbal language can create positivity. In this body language lesson, students discuss a scenario in which body langauge could be used to enlist positive feelings.  Young scholars come up...

The verbal techniques and emotional appeals contained in the language used in political ads plays a vital role in creating the impact of the ad. As class members continue their study of Presidential campaign commercials from 1952–2012,...

The classroom might not be the best place for informal language, but it's a great place to teach middle and high schoolers how to identify the correct language register for their audience. A short lesson on formal and informal language...

Explore the folklore of Asia and the South Pacific with this language arts lesson series. Complementing a reading of Catching the Sun: Tales from Asia by Jan M. Mike, this resource supports learners with understanding cause and...

"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union..." These familiar lines begin the Preamble to the Constitution, but do learners know what they mean? A close reading exercise takes a look at the language of the...

Bring this lesson into your unit about creative writing and precise language. First, middle schoolers create a piece of writing with the help of their classmates. In the second part of this workshop, they edit their own piece of writing....

Use a Courbet painting of a cave or tunnel opening to reinforce the importance of descriptive writing. Writers of all ages use sensory details to describe what the scene depicts as they pretend to be in the painting. Then they imagine...

Middle schoolers use context clues to find the figurative meaning of similes and metaphors in writing. They practice using figurative language to help their writing come alive. Use this activity in a instructional activity about poetry,...

Using their keen eyes and ears, learners build story observation skills which they will use to create sensory detail in their art. They note all of the things they observed on a walk, categorize them by sense, and then use the same skill...

All ages love to engage in cartoon writing –- little do they know that they actually learn quite a bit from it! In an instructional session focused on literacy syntax and vocabulary, your pupils work cooperatively to draw six pictures...

If you need a lesson plan for your poetry unit, use two poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ("Rain in Summer" and "The Slave in the Dismal Swamp") and a resource on Elements of Poetry. The lesson plan guides you through...

The point of view in a story can dramatically change the story itself. Focus on finding the points of view in various reading passages with a language arts packet, which includes fiction and nonfiction text.

Practice language development and linguistics with a lesson featuring audio recordings. As kids record the ways they pronounce words and sentences, they learn to upload and organize their audio files into iTunes.

Teaching young learners about similes is easy as pie with this primary grade language arts lesson. Following a class reading of the children's book, Quick as a Cricket by Audrey Wood, young readers learn the definition of a simile...

Explore how language is used for comic effect. Middle schoolers determine which of the three formulas for jokes (double meanings, unexpected outcome, humorous mental image) make each of 18 classic, corny examples funny. They complete a...

To better understand the work of Black Panther logo artist Emory Douglas, learners define literary devices. They define a series of words such as metaphor, simile, and assonance, then place an example of that device found in Emory...

What makes a place safe? What makes a setting effective? Explore the safe spaces and descriptive language with a prereading activity for Willa Cather's My Antonia. The teacher describes his or her own safe space and then prompts pupils...

Begin the drafting phase of the writing process with a lesson plan focused on logically writing three body paragraphs. Then, revise the writing to make it more formal after a teacher-directed mini-lesson plan. Each paragraph highlights...

Beyonce's "Halo" and Bruno Mars' "Grenade" provide eighth graders with an opportunity to consider how a writer's choice of words can create a very different tone even when the subject is the same. After a close reading of both lyrics,...

As part of their study of A Midsummer Night's Dream, class members meet in a drama circle to discuss and role-play scenes from the play. They then engage in an activity called World Cafe, analyzing the characters' actions from the text....

Young readers take a look at the conditional and subjunctive moods authors use. The Conditional and Subjunctive Mood handout defines the types of moods and gives them examples and practice. They then work with partners to identify...