It's time to put the plan into practice. Using their plans from the previous instructional activity, scholars create multimedia and visual displays for their opinion speeches. Next, they watch videos of speeches and use a presentation...

Let's get visual. Pupils plan visual displays to accompany their upcoming opinion speech presentations. Additionally, they practice editing sentences for clarity before revising their speech drafts.

Back to the drawing board. Scholars work on the visual to complement their claim presentations using the Criteria for the Cascading Consequences Chart Visual as a guide. They then practice their presentations with partners. 

Eye contact, volume, pronunciation are all parts of a great presentation. Scholars create visual displays to clarify the claim for an upcoming presentation about whether the American Academy of Pediatrics should increase its screen time...

Elementary and middle schoolers research animal facts and use them in a fable. First, they pair-share to find animal traits to use in writing a fable. They then complete a prewriting worksheet. After going through the writing process,...

Do your young readers have difficulty visualizing what they read? Although the activity described here is for The Call of the Wild, the strategy could be used with any narrative. At the conclusion of each chapter of Jack London’s novel,...

Identify the unique personal attributes of your class members. Begin by viewing the Visual Thesaurus and discussing displayed attributes associated with famous American leaders. Using these identity maps as models, pupils generate nouns...

A geographic perspective helps historians learn about significant eras such as the civil rights movement. Through research and source analysis, learners create a report depicting a significant location of this time. They synthesize their...

Embark on a journey of writing several different types of poetry. Fifth graders read several examples, and use the examples to model their own writing. Each poem is to be accompanied by a different art visual representation. In the end,...

Sure, your young artists probably know Van Gogh and Picasso, but are they equally as familiar with Frida Kahlo and Andy Warhol? Small groups examine the work of famous artists. Then, they create their own hero portraits in Cubist style...

Fifth graders demonstrate research techniques in addition to endeavoring to display focus and stay on topic. Using books and stories, they gather, organize, and share information about a topic. Additionally, they explain to the class...

Fourth graders build language skills in the context of creating a classroom magzine. They participate in activities which help students communitcate ideas and information for a variety of purposes and for specific audiences using the...

Budding authors research a US President and persuade the National Park Service to add him to Mt. Rushmore. In addition to the persuasive essay, individuals are required to develop a visual presentation using a web-based software that...

Visuals help clarify claims. Scholars create visual displays to accompany their end-of-unit presentations about water sustainability. Using blank paper and their notes from the unit, they put their creativity to good use and then...

Knock, knock, knock...Creep out your class with a critical thinking lesson focused on word relationships in Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart." They investigate  the relationship between word choice, mood, and interpretation of...

Help learners build greater self-awareness and improve listening skills with these visual prompt sheets. Beginning with an "Are you really listening?" overview sheet, the following pages use large visuals to remind pupils...

Step into history and step out with a new understanding of events. These strategies bring a new level of understanding of key events by asking viewers to engage in and respond to projected images. Complete directions for the activity, a...

"The Hare and the Water," a Tanzanian folk tale, lends a global perspective to literary analysis. Learners spend the first two days reading and storyboarding. On day three, they examine folk tale elements (worksheet included), and design...

Young scholars focus on visual literacy in this lesson which can be incorporated to any previous lesson. Using images, they identify the visual elements and design in them and examining the various patterns present. In groups, they...

Students navigate the Visual Thesaurus to find keywords for research.  In this keywords lesson, students use synonyms, hypernyms and hyponyms to find keywords. Students understand why some searches are effective and some are...

Before you jump into this lesson plan, be aware there is little to work with. That being said, the ideas are solid and will be brought to life with a little Halloween spirit. Learners examine horror as a sub-genre, and contemplate what...

What's the best resource to use when looking up words? Use Visual Thesaurus to see a word's meaning. The class accesses the interactive website and then compares and contrasts the difference between using a traditional dictionary and the...

Read and analyze a variety of Shakespearean and contemporary puns using Visual Thesaurus computer software. Middle and high schoolers analyze a pun as a class; in small groups they analyze a Shakespearean pun using contextual clues and...

Explore objective and subjective writing in this interdisciplinary lesson, which brings language arts and visual art together. Middle and high school students examine the sculpture Head with Horns by Paul Gauguin. They then analyze the...