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Meet Our Teachers
Learners of all ages interview, record, and photograph teachers and staff at their school. They organize the photo with a soundbite into a PowerPoint presentation. They transcribe the interview and write a response to it.
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Check My Writing
Use this resource as an evaluation tool, or have your class assess their own letter writing skills. They will use a checklist that they create during some interactive writing sessions as criteria for their self-evaluation. Teachers can...
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Narrative Literature Response Letters: Original Lesson Plan
Readers write a formal letter to an author offering an alternative ending to a story the author has written. First, the class reads a story or novel. Upon finishing the reading, they are introduced to the format of a formal letter. They...
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Writing Process- Narrative Writing
Graphic organizers are a wonderful tool for young writers to use to help them get their thoughts in order for a piece of writing. Here, learners are coached on what a piece of narrative writing is, and how they must have a distinct...
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How to Write A+ Essays!
This lesson plan, which promises to improve the essays of your middle schoolers, contains a list of characteristics an essay should include. It breaks it down into the introduction, thesis statement, body, etc. There's also a list of...
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Bunnies, Bunnies, Bunnies
Using rabbits as the theme, learners do research and create a class project. In this instructional activity, they begin by listening to Bunnicula by Deborah and James Howe, then they do research on a particular breed of rabbit, and,...
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Creating an Oral History--Who Tells the Story?
Explore the difficulties in compiling an oral history with this lesson. Young researchers conduct interviews and consider how point of view changes various accounts of a single incidence, resulting in conflicting information. They view a...
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How Do I Write an Article Critique?
Your middle and high schoolers have written tons of summaries, but can they give a strong critique of an article they've read? Identify the differences between summary writing and critiquing. Choose an interesting article and have...
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Putting It All Together: Revision
Use the revision process to polish your writing. Writers prepare works for job portfolios that include cover letters, job applications, resumes, and letters of recommendation. Prepare them for the future!
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Chicken Soup with Rice Extension Activities
After reading Chicken Soup with Rice, by Maurice Sendak, incorporate some of these great extension activities into your lesson plan. Ideas include focusing on knowing the months of the year, or studying the illustrations and how...
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Using Each Trait to Improve Student Writing
Students examine examples of the qualities of good writing skills and discuss how each of the traits add to the process of good writing. A variety of excerpts from literature provide samples for the exploration.
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Lesson on 'The Chimney Boy's Story' by Wes Magee
Wes Magee's poem "The Chimney Boy's Story" about chimney sweeps/climbing boys is used as an introduction to a lesson that asks groups to research child labor in Victorian Britain.
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Summarizing Story Events
Here is a way to build your pupils' public speaking abilities. The lesson describes a reader's report chair, which is used each week by a student who has just finished reading a book. The featured reader sits in the chair and talks about...
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Summarizing Story Events
After reading a book on their own, pupils prepare an oral report on the book, and sit in the "Readers Report Chair" when giving the report to the class. They are taught to briefly summarize the book by talking about one of two...
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Reading Made Easy with Mindwing Concepts
While this resource is actually attempting to sell a product, the foundational ideas may be worth looking into. Using Braidy the StoryBraid doll, learners will gain a better understanding of beginning, middle, and end, as well as story...
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Creating Context Mural
students examine the historical, political, religious and culture aspects of the Renaissance. Using this information, they read "Galileo" by Bertolt Brecht. They use the internet to research a specific event of the time period and come...
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Stone Soup
First graders examine the use of logic, deduction, and inference to determine the answers to riddles. They listen to a teacher read aloud of Heather Forest's, Stone Soup before discussing the story which gauges their comprehension....
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Literature and Telecommunications
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...
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SAT Preparation
The verbal and quantitative sections of the SAT can be a challenge for even the most erudite logophile. Prepare your test takers for the vocabulary they will encounter on standardized exams by providing them with a helpful list of roots,...
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Comparing-Contrasting With Cookies
Students compare and contrast cookies. In this compare and contrast lesson plan, students complete a graphic organizer and identify the similarities and differences in Girl Scout Cookies. Students write an analysis.
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Winter Syllables pg. 2
Come December, practice syllable counting with the appropriate time of year! Using the winter theme, readers identify the winter picture, clap the number of syllables, and place the correct number of cotton balls next to the four...
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Surname Survey
Students use data from the U.S. Census Bureau to determine whether last names in a local phone directory reflect the Census Bureau's list of the most common surnames in the country. In this surnames lesson plan, students use the Internet...
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Narrative Cartoons
Students create a narrative cartoon. In this narrative lesson, students use a Peace Corp website to collect information and photographs that they add captions to and use to create their own narrative cartoons.
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Text Features of a Story
Bring the enjoyable story of Anansi and the Moss-Covered Rock by Eric A. Kimmel to your young readers. After reading the story as a class, learners answer questions about a reading and make a graphic organizer. They make...