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Activity
Curated OER

Express Yourself Lesson Seed 18: Investigate

For Teachers 6th Standards
Prepare your class for argumentative writing with a close inspection of the controversy surrounding Theodore Taylor's novel, The Cay. All necessary articles and materials are linked at the beginning of the resource. Kids use the provided...
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Activity
Curated OER

Express Yourself Lesson Seed 19: Synthesis

For Teachers 6th Standards
Wrap up your unit on The Cay with an engaging argumentative writing assignment. Writers must decide if they believe The Cay should be banned. The resource includes links to several articles, which have been addressed and examined in...
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Activity
Curated OER

Express Yourself Lesson Seed 14: Dedication

For Teachers 6th Standards
Connect Martin Luther King Jr's famous speech, "I Have a Dream," to The Cay by Theodore Taylor. Taylor refers to the speech in his dedication, which creates a natural segue into talking about the speech and how it relates to the novel....
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Activity
Curated OER

Express Yourself Lesson Seed 2

For Teachers 6th Standards
Use Langston Hughes's poem, "Words Like Freedom," to explore the concepts of freedom and liberty. Learners read the poem, determine the theme, and use the provided graphic organizer to examine the connotative and denotative meanings of...
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Activity
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Curated OER

Express Yourself Lesson Seed 1

For Teachers 6th Standards
Make a study of the First Amendment and its relationship to freedom. Pupils rewrite the amendment and discuss the central idea before focusing on a specific phrase. After discussing, class members write a journal entry about the included...
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Activity
Curated OER

Express Yourself Lesson Seed 3

For Teachers 6th Standards
If you're looking to set your class up for writing effective arguments, try out this idea. While originally created with freedom as a guiding idea, the activity could easily be adapted for other themes. As a class, create a chart of...
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Activity
Curated OER

Express Yourself Lesson Seed 4

For Teachers 6th Standards
Get started with The Cay. First, provide some background information and images that relate to the novel. Then pupils can create double-entry journals. Once that is complete, read the first two chapters, encouraging individuals to record...
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Activity
Curated OER

Express Yourself Lesson Seed 6 Close Reading

For Teachers 6th Standards
Look back at the third chapter of The Cay with your class. Pupils will conduct a close reading, taking a second look at a chunk of text and responding to a series of text-dependent questions. Wrap up with an analytical writing prompt...
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Activity
Curated OER

Express Yourself Lesson Seed 11: Setting

For Teachers 6th Standards
Encourage your learners to examine the setting in Theodore Taylor's The Cay. Pupils work in small groups to put together a description of the setting before reading two more chapters of the book. They use their double-entry journals to...
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Activity
Curated OER

Express Yourself Lesson Seed 12: Story Event

For Teachers 6th Standards
Focus on plot and the impact-specific events in The Cay. Class members use their double-entry journals, created in a previous lesson in this series, to record their thinking about the guiding question as they read chapters 15 through 17....
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Activity
Curated OER

Express Yourself Lesson Seed 15: Theme

For Teachers 6th Standards
Build understanding of theme with an activity designed for The Cay and the Common Core. Small groups or pairs use graphic organizers to determine themes, find and record related details from the text, and formulate theme statements. In...
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Lesson Plan
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National Endowment for the Humanities

The President Under the Articles of Confederation

For Teachers 6th - 8th Standards
The Articles of Confederation sounds like one big, fancy title to middle schoolers. Here, scaffolded steps help to ease novices into understanding this all-important American document. Discussion questions, lesson activities, and ideas...
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Worksheet
LearnEnglishFeelGood.com

Using Commas, ESL

For Students 6th - 10th Standards
Put those comma skills to the test with a straightforward practice exercise. Learners rewrite 10 sentences to include the missing commas.
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Handout
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J. Hines, Ed Prgms Intern

Comma Usage

For Students 4th - 10th Standards
Sometimes it feels like young writers just place commas as they please! Ensure that your pupils uses these important punctuation marks properly by requiring them to study the information here and complete the grammar exercise....
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Worksheet
Have Fun Teaching

Commas

For Students 3rd - 8th Standards
Help your pupils punctuate properly! This particular worksheet focuses on commas and requires learners to write original sentences that fulfill certain comma requirements.
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Worksheet
Curated OER

Punctuating Dialogue

For Students 3rd - 8th Standards
What did she say? Invite your class to make sense of these grammatically incorrect sentences by adding in punctuation and capitalization. All of the sentences include dialogue, so learners will have to practice their knowledge about how...
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Worksheet
Curated OER

The Swiss Family Robinson Teacher's Notes

For Students 3rd - 5th Standards
Guide young readers through the classic novel The Swiss Family Robinson with this collection of activities and worksheets. From basic spelling and grammar practice, to reading comprehension skills, this resource will enhance children's...
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Activity
Curated OER

Express Yourself Lesson Seed 17: Obituary

For Teachers 6th Standards
The Cay has been criticized by groups such as the Council on Interracial Books for Children because of the way race is portrayed. Explore the argument against the book while taking the author's perspective into account. Class members...
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Activity
Curated OER

Express Yourself Lesson Seed 8: Character

For Teachers 6th Standards
Characters often change over the course of a story or novel. Use the sample graphic organizer provided here to track how the narrator has responded to the sequence of events in chapter four through six of The Cay. In addition to this...
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Activity
Curated OER

Express Yourself Lesson Seed 9: Climax

For Teachers 6th Standards
Conduct a close reading of chapter 9 of The Cay. Read the chapter again and ask pupils to respond to a list of included text-dependent questions. Finish the class with the provided writing assignment, which asks learners to use textual...
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Activity
Curated OER

Express Yourself Lesson Seed 10: Character Development

For Teachers 6th Standards
Make a study of Timothy and his development as a character over the course of the first half or so of The Cay. This idea focuses in particular on chapters 10 through 12. Learners start out by working on double-entry journals created in...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Writing a Personal Narrative

For Teachers 6th - 8th Standards
What is the difference between a news story and a personal narrative? This plan has learners write a personal narrative using the topic of service projects in their community. Consider completing a cross-curricular extension by bringing...
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Lesson Plan
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Curated OER

Telling Our Stories of Giving - Writing to Persuade

For Teachers 5th - 8th Standards
After identifying the parts of a persuasive piece of writing, young writers explore different prewriting activities for the persuasive essay. They have the option to write a news article, personal narrative, or persuasive essay to...
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Lesson Plan
2
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Curated OER

Just Lookin' For a Home

For Teachers 3rd - 5th Standards
What is a boll weevil? Your class can find out that and more by following the activities included here. Pupils read an article, sing a boll weevil song, add to the song with their own original lyrics, illustrate the song, study the...