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Lesson Plan for Nonfiction Comprehension: Posing Questions
Students practice writing questions on a selected topic. Students discuss questioning skills. They browse through books and magazines, review their textbooks, watch a film, or participate in a similar experience that will provide some...
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Chef for a Day
Learners make chocolate chip cookies. In this cooking lesson, students follow a recipe by doing each step in sequence.
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Who's Better? Who's Best?
Students practice their reading and speaking skills by expressing their opinions of characters.
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The Impact
Learn about the destruction of the rainforest by analyzing statistics. Young learners make an original line graph showing destruction in the rainforest. Additional activities include making a collage, sequencing Dr. Seuss' The...
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Central America and the Caribbean
Use the library or Internet to find resources on a chosen topic. The class will comprehend the collected information, structure the information with texts and graphics for a presentation. Each presentation focuses on Hispanic culture and...
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Giggle Poetry
Poetry can be fun! To set your pupils giggling, have them listen to poems from If Kids Ruled the School by Bruce Lansky. Then, they can study the different types of poetry on www.gigglepoetry.com, and choose one form on which to...
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"The Three Billy Goats Gruff:" Retelling the Story
Youngsters retell the story of The Three Billy Goats Gruff. They write a sentence for speech bubbles for a character in the story, identify the phrases that can be used for retelling a story, and in small groups write a sentence for the...
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The Sand Horse
Fourth graders are introduced to the book THE SAND HORSE and discuss the title and cover illustration. They listen to the story listening for words and phrases to describe the setting. They then brainstorm key words to illustrate the...
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What Is War?
What kinds of human activity do we define as "warlike"? Middle and high schoolers examine various definitions of war and types of warfare, especially as these descriptions relate to the kinds of war we are witnessing at the beginning of...
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ELA.CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.11-12.3
Tired of simple sentences? Bored by brief sentences? Plagued by boring sentences? Enrich your life and the writing of your pupils by modeling how to combine sentences to create more varied syntax. Groups then find a number of ways to...
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Stop Sign Punctuation
Students use punctuation and capitalization. In this grammar lesson students use stop signs in the place of periods. Students cut out sentences and put stop signs in appropriate places. Students indicate capitalization where needed.
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Review of Literary Devices
Sixth graders review literary devices. They use both fiction and nonfiction texts to review metaphor, simile, alliteration, imagery, symbolism and personification. This instructional activity has a scripted guide for the teacher to follow.
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Short 'A' and Phoneme Blending
Have your class explore the short /a/ sound. They will pronounce isolated consonant and short /a/ sounds and then blend the sounds to make a word. An assessment sheet is provided.
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Cops and Robbers
Second graders observe the teacher model writing a letter to the author of the book, COPS AND ROBBERS. They then compare the story structure of the book to those of FUNNYBONES and identify the setting, characters and theme.
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Scribbleboy
Fifth graders are introduced to the text, SCRIBBLEBOY, discussing the cover page for clues to the genre. They discuss the ordinary surroundings contrasted by the graffiti and the words and phrases used to provide information about the...
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Pairing with Picture Books: Chasing Lincoln's Killer
Readers of Chasing Lincoln’s Killer, James L Swanson’s young adult novel, use a Venn diagram to compare information about Abraham Lincoln and the events surrounding his assassination, with the images and information presented in picture...
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Definition Expedition
Students study about three ways to define a term in technical writing, search the Web for scientific text, then copy and paste sections into a Word document. Finally, they use the highlighter feature of Word to highlight examples of...
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The Sentence Contest
Students review the definition of a sentence and identify the sentences (complete thoughts) from a list of possibilities. Students evaluate complete and incomplete sentences by being judges at a sentence contest.
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The Sentence Contest
Young writers complete work with sentence structure. Theys go over the definition of a sentence before deciding whether given groups of words are sentences. They view and identify the sentences on a teacher made chart.
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Writing to a Specific Topic
After a class discussion where learners make predictions about what will happen in a book based on its cover illustration, pupils are asked to compose a written response about an aspect of the story and include some of their own...
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Kamishibai Stories
Students explore kamishibai stories, Japanese stories told through illustrated picture cards, and become familiar with their form. Afterward, they develop their own illustrated kamishibai story. Students discuss the process of drawing,...
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Introduce: Summarizing Narrative Text
When scholars re-tell a story, do they boil it down to important details in a logical order? Practice summarizing narratives using this think-aloud strategy, which is scripted here for your convenience. After explaining why this is an...
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Poetry Cubes
Young scholars develop an appreciation for different styles of poetry and learn different techniques for memorization.
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Enjoying the Adventure
Middle schoolers watch the video of "The Prince and the Pauper" and analyze, compare and contrast the characters. They write letters to a character from the point of view of another character and create a new ending to the play.