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Invigorate Your Curriculum with the Poetry of Emily Dickinson
Dickinson’s poems enliven the disciplines of language arts, social science, and even math.
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Characterization in Literature
High schoolers discover characterization techniques and methods. In this characterization lesson, students choose favorite fiction characters and discuss what makes a character come alive. High schoolers then describe a family member or...
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Pablo Neruda
Eighth graders explore the life and works of Pablo Neruda. They complete an author map concerning his personal and professional life. Students identify the key components of an ode. They write an ode to a common object around their...
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Anne Frank and Louisiana - There is a Connection!
How is Louisiana connected to the Holocaust? After reading The Diary of Anne Frank, eighth graders complete a research report about a survivor of the Holocaust who currently resides in Louisiana. Though the idea is a good way to connect...
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Character Sketches
Students are introduced to the types of characters found in short stories. They read a short story in class and produce sketches of the protagonist and antagonist. Finally, they create their own characters and write about them in their...
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Teaching and Learning Through Objects
Students identify and interpret the function, usefulness or utitlity, form, beauty or aesthetics, and meaning, context or story, of objects and how they learn new skills and make things that they learn traditionally, by observation and...
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Analytical Essay
What is an analytical essay? Introduce this type of thinking to your young writers. First, discuss what it means to analyze something. Then, identify the different components of an essay and what details are embedded in each component....
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Culture Collage
Students investigate their cultural heritage and make observations on how much influence their past has on their current values and lifestyle. They brainstorm a list of things that represent a certain country or cultural heritage and...
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Can We Switch Genders of Story Characters?
Students read and review the main elements of a story. In this language arts lesson, students predict what the story read to them would have been like if the genders of the characters had been different. Students write a new story in...
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Fahrenheit 451 - Essay Questions
In this literature worksheet, students respond to 12 short answer and essay questions about Bradbury's Farenheit 451. Students may also link to an online interactive quiz on the novel at the bottom of the page.
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Constrating Cinderellas/ Connecting LA Cenerentola
Learners contrast the traditional Cinderella character with a modern, independent and socially conscious Cinderella. To activate prior knowledge by eliciting from the students some of the familiar story elements of the traditional...
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A Feat of Daring with Lewis and Clark Jeopardy
Sixth graders discover the exploration of the United States by participating in a class activity. In this U.S. History lesson, 6th graders research the Lewis and Clark expedition and participate in a game of Jeopardy based on the two...
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HOLES UNIT
Students participate in the unit based on the Newbery Medal-winning novel by Louis Sachar and the Walt Disney Movie "Holes". They use the layered curriculum model of assessment and activities.
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A Raisin in the Sun: Vocabulary Bingo
Students study A Raisin in the Sun. Students study new vocabulary through a game of bingo. Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech "I Have a Dream" as a supplementary text. Students create their own bingo cards.
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What's Cooking
Third graders practice following and writing directions through the use of simple recipes. First they write directions for creating an ice cream sundae. Then they make the sundaes using the recipe written by their classmates.
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Writing Process
Students read Macbeth and work in groups to organize and create an outline for a persuasive essay. In this persuasive essay lesson, students work in tiered learning groups to organize their thoughts for a persuasive thesis about the...
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The Journey of the Magi
Students create storyboards. In this pre-Christmas special lesson, students produce a storyboard for a TV version of the poem, "The Journey of the Magi". Options to complete with or without technology are included.
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Twelfth Night: Thrusting Greatness Upon the Television 1
Students create skits based on pairs of words. In this Twelfth Night instructional activity, students create a cluster map in which they brainstorm a dialogue/scene based on their word pair. Students perform and record their scenes and...
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Teaching Poetry Using DARTs
Learners interact with texts. They are given the first four lines of Walt Whitman's poem "When I heard the learned astronomer." Students read them and discuss what they think Walt Whitman did when he heard the astronomer.
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Which One Doesn't Belong?
Third graders identify words that are related with 80% accuracy. Given a list of four vocabulary words, 3rd graders identify specific relationships between three of the four words. They also identify which of the four words are not...
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Lincoln, Douglass, and Black Emergence (Literature and Politics, 1840-1865)
Students examine the ideas of Lincoln and Douglass. In groups, they compare and contrast writings from each man and how they formed the nation with their ideas. After watching "Glory", they discuss how people like Lincoln and Douglass...