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School Day
Students participate in a lesson that involves writing a persuasive essay. They use the prompt of "extending the school day". The paper should contain correct elements of sentence structure with clear purpose that is supported with...
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Movies in Your Mind
Students practice visualizing elements from a story. While reading a poem aloud, the instructor models what they see as they read the passage. Students draw a picture of a scene from the book "How to Eat Fried Worms" after reading it...
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Fables and Trickster Tales Around the World
Students analyze fables and trickster tales from various cultural traditions. For this fable analysis lesson, students identify the elements of fables and trickster stories. Students read Aesop's fables and Ananse spider stories....
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It Was a Dark and Stormy Night
Using Alpha Smarts, 3rd graders write a "Story-in-the-Round". The end result of this project is one story for every student in the class that has been written by the entire class. Students create a PowerPoint presentation with a...
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Rock & Roll through Literary Terms: An Upbeat Lyrical Adventure
Young scholars participate in a variety of activities surrounding Rock & Roll music, lyrics, drama and visual art and how they all help demonstrate examples of literary terms. They use Rock & Roll as an effective aid to stimulate...
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Conflict Resolution in the World Today: Introduction to Current World conflicts, their Antecendents, the Progression, and their Potential Conclusions
Students write a paragraph describing a conflict they had with a friend or a family member and a paragraph explaining how it was resolved. In this social science lesson plan, students share their paragraphs with a partner and then will...
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Three Part Dialogue
Eighth graders write a three part dialogue as part of an effective memoir. In this three part dialogue lesson, 8th graders are given two parts of a dialogue and emotions that accompany the words. Students then create the...
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Fractured Fairy Tales
Students use familiar characters, plots, and settings from traditional fairy tales to create "fractured" versions, while experimenting with satire, irony and parody. A fractured fairy tale is designed to be humorous by changing the story...
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The 1980's Series - Music
Learners examine artwork by Keith Haring, and listen to music popular in the 1980s that influenced him. They develop storyboards, and film music videos for their favorite song.
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The Experience of Diary Writing
Young scholars read sections of Mackenzie King's diary. King was the Prime Minister of Canada during WWII. They relate the importance of keeping a diary.
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And Tomorrow's Forecast Is...
Students create original short stories that feature distinctive weather phenomena, such as rainbows, snowstorms, tornadoes, thunder and/or lightning. They use a story map, imbedded in this plane, to help them organize their story.
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American Revolutionary War: Two Sides...Two Perspectives
Students investigate the American Revolutionary War era from the perspective of Britain and the American colonists by researching causes, effects, events and people. They compare the views of the Colonists, and the British and recognize...
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Marching to the Beat of a Different Drum
Students explore the American dream. In this contemporary music lesson, students analyze the lyrics of songs by Neil Diamond, Bruce Springsteen, and David Massengill. Students create 3-D representations of the American dream and write...
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Lesson Plan 1: Introducing NaNo and Novels
Did you know that November is Novel Writing Month? In the first of a series of lessons, class members are introduced to the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) project.
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Parts of a Story
Students read a short fiction book and demostrate comprehension by identifying the main characters, setting, conflict, theme, and summarizing the main points. They organize the information in Inspiration and create a powerpoint to show...
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Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury: April Eighth, 1928: Narrating from an 'Ordered Place'?
Young scholars describe Faulkner's use of time to structure the plot of The Sound and the Fury. They discuss the differences between first and third person narration and its effects on the novel. Discussion of the overall meaning is...
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Fifties/Sixties Musical Playwriting Workshop
Students write a coherent script based on characterization, theme, conflict and emotional tone as found in the songs' lyrics and develop an understanding of the enjoyment that comes through discipline and hard work leading toward a...
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Language Arts: Predicting and Clarifying Techniques
First graders discover predicting and clarifying skills while reading "The Old Woman and Her Pig." During the reading, they check their predictions while evaluating the characters, setting, problems, and solution. On the second day,...
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How Do Respect and Humiliation Shape Conflict?
Students explore the feelings surrounded by humiliation, resentment and retaliation in the context of school violence. For this character building lesson, students examine possible reasons for school violence and focus on possible...
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Families: Different and the Same
Learners compare varying family structures. In this family structures lesson, students write a book about their family. Learners read The House on Mango Street.
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Blending Fiction and Nonfiction to Improve Comprehension and Writing Skills
Learners explore a content area by reading both fiction and nonfiction texts on the topic. They do more research online about the topic. After comparing the texts, they create their own written original work, using both narrative and...
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Tell Me a Whopper!
Sixth graders investigate tall tales as a literary genre. They listen to a number of tall tales to discover how exaggeration is used as a story element. They write and publish a tall tale using word processing software. They illustrate...
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Henry Spelman: The Powhatan Indians' English Boy
Sixth graders read and analyze narrative writing by and about Henry Spelman, a boy-laborer who helped settle Jamestown. They read biographical information, discuss the harsh conditions, and write a narrative piece on Henry's experiences.
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Voices of Our People: A Patchwork of Cultures
Pupils view a gallery of photographs online and list objective and subject observations of the photos. They develop questions about the photos and write first person narratives about them.