The traditional autobiography writing project is given a twist as students write alphabiographies - recording an event, person, object, or feeling associated with each letter of the alphabet.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
In this minilesson, students practice identifying and purposefully using vocabulary in persuasive writing that is intended to have an emotional impact on the reader.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
In this lesson students explore a number of sources to create a biographical timeline about a selected person. Students collaboratively research and resolve conflicting information they find during their investigation.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Students use a text set to increase understanding of content area material and demonstrate what they have learned by writing an original piece that blends together narrative and expository elements.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Following the traditional form of the haiku, students publish their own haikus using Animoto, an online web tool that creates slideshows that blend text and music.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
The Compare & Contrast Map is an interactive graphic organizer that enables students to organize and outline their ideas for different kinds of comparison essays.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Interactive
** This book has been donated to the public domain.** From the introduction: Hello there . . . ! Welcome to English Banana.com’s Big Grammar Book. It’s the third fantastic book from English Banana and the aim this time is to practise grammar, grammar and, er, more grammar! It’s jam-packed from cover to cover with a great selection of photocopiable worksheets taken from the popular English Banana.com website. We wanted to provide teachers with a really useful book of no-nonsense grammar worksheets that they can dip into and use in class with students at Entry Level (ESOL Core Curriculum Entry Levels 1 & 2). It is also ideal for students to work with at home since the answers are all printed at the back. The book is divided into four parts and is graded in difficulty, so that it begins with some basic stuff and builds up to more challenging grammar activities. It features a selection of Essential English worksheets which provide practice for crucial basic areas of knowledge for learners at Entry Level, like using numbers, writing the alphabet, spelling days and months correctly, and so on.
Material Type: Textbook
In this alternative to the traditional book report, students respond to a play they have read by creating a resume for one of its characters.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Resources to mark the 100th day of school with math activities. Challenge students to generate 100 different ways to represent the number 100. Students will easily generate 99 + 1 and 50 + 50, but encourage them to think out of the box. Challenge them to include examples from all of the NCTM Standards strands: number sense, numerical operations, geometry, measurement, algebra, patterns, data analysis, probability, discrete math, Create a class list to record the best entries. Some teachers write 100 in big bubble numeral style and then record the entries inside the numerals.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
Welcome to the Teachers' Corner of Small Things Considered. In this section, we include the posts we deem most adequate for teaching purposes. We have reorganized them into subject areas geared for a typical microbiology course. To date, this material has been used for various forms of intellectual enrichment, e.g., suggested readings, class presentations, a source of topics for term papers. You can also find here our Talmudic Questions, which we characterize as those whose answers cannot be found in Google. We are told that some of these questions have been used in exams ranging from tests for undergraduate courses to qualifying/prelims for graduate students.
Material Type: Assessment, Reading
What drives changes to classic myths and fables? In this lesson students evaluate the changes Disney made to the myth of "Hercules" in order to achieve their audience and purpose.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Students must think critically to create comic strips highlighting six important scenes from a book they have read.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Adapting the song "A-Hunting We Will Go," students put a "whale" in a "pail" and even "take a little "bear" and hug it if we "dare"."
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
After gaining skill through analyzing a historic and contemporary speech as a class, students will select a famous speech from a list compiled from several resources and write an essay that identifies and explains the rhetorical strategies that the author deliberately chose while crafting the text to make an effective argument. Their analysis will consider questions such as: What makes the speech an argument?, How did the author's rhetoric evoke a response from the audience?, and Why are the words still venerated today?
Material Type: Assessment, Lesson Plan, Unit of Study
Creating an illustrated alphabet book of action words, from "attack" to "zap", reinforces the definition of verbs as it stretches and expands students' vocabulary.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Students must "become" a character in a novel in order to describe themselves and other characters using powerful adjectives.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Explore reading strategies using Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" and other works. Students read Poe's works in both large- and small-group readings then conclude with a variety of projects.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Unit of Study
A new instructional model, called Argument-Driven Inquiry (ADI), is introduced to elementary teachers in this article. The author shows how school librarians and classroom teachers can collaborate to help students construct and communicate evidence, or arguments. Evidence buckets, a collaborative activity, and related online resources are presented. The article appears in the free online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle, which is structured around the seven essential principles of climate literacy.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan, Teaching/Learning Strategy
Evaluating has been called one of the six most important reading comprehension strategies. In this article, it is also considered as a strategy for analyzing and interpreting data. This professional development article appears in the free, online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle, which integrates science education and literacy instruction for K-grade 5 teachers. Each issue examines one of the recognized essential principles of climate literacy and the climate sciences and one or more reading strategies for elementary teachers and their students.
Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy
Students will watch a video of a storyteller coming up with a rap that tells a story. They will identify story elements (who, what, and where), and record significant details. The next lesson plan ,Using Story Elements to Write a Rap, has students creating their own rap with the story elements.
Material Type: Lecture
