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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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Introduce Vocabulary: Peter's Chair (Keats)
A new baby means a lot of changes for Peter! Ezra Jack Keats presents this common childhood experience in his story Peter's Chair, the context of a detailed vocabulary study. Before you read, introduce the three new words scholars will...
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Shakespeare 2000
Young thespians can try their hand at writing a script and acting out a scene, while gaining a deeper understanding of the universal topics presented in Shakespeare's wide array of plays. Begin the lesson by conducting a compare and...
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Modernism in Poetry, Painting, and Music
Are you teaching Modernism to your class? Connect different areas of artistic expression in the Modernist Era. Learners read T.S. Eliot, view art by Pablo Picasso, and listen to a Modernist musical composition. This final assignment is...
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Dr. Heidegger's Experiment
What are the pros and cons of prolonging life? Incorporate real-world issues into the study of literature using Dr. Heidegger's Experiment. Through the exploration of pre-determined websites, scholars consider several related literary...
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Literary Response and Analysis Theme Literature
Analyze the central idea or literary theme found in a series of quotes from the Shakespearean play, Hamlet. For literary analysis, learners paraphrase excerpts from the play and then identify the characters' motivations for their speech.
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Build Mastery: Main Idea
Use a graphic organizer to get readers thinking about main ideas as they record the who, what, where, when, and why of a story. Consider modeling this process completely before kids do this independently. They fill in five boxes charting...
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Comparing Works By The Same Author: Venn Diagram
A Venn diagram is a great tool. Middle schoolers research specific authors from different time periods, cultures, and genres. In groups, they create a Venn Diagram in order to compare and contrast two pieces of literature by the same...
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"Knot" the Whole Truth: Writing a Modern-Day Story with a Tall Tale's Voice
Beyond Paul Bunyan and his blue ox, tall tales can be a great way to teach young writers about word choice and voice in their writing. Using Jerry Spinelli's Maniac Magee and the Six-Trait Writing process, they begin to write their own...
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Harry Potter and the Spellbound Children
Help your class explore the world of Harry Potter. Learners visit selected websites to learn the background about the book series, discover details about the marketing of the books, and investigate book banning.
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Build Mastery: Fact and Opinion
Is it a fact or an opinion? Get your kids up and moving during this reading comprehension activity. They listen to you read a book or passage (consider writing something yourself to get the ideal text), listening for facts and opinions....
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Bronze Bow
Explore ancient Rome through reading The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth George Speare. Readers activate prior knowledge by examining objects that relate to the story and predict the significance of the items. Their curiosity is aroused through...
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Novel Ideas: History of the American Novel
Explore the history of the American novel in the contexts of literature and US history. How does a novel or piece of writing from a particular time showcase the mood during that historical period? After conducting research and discussing...
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"Weighing the Elephant"
Can your class solve the problem presented in the Chinese folktale, "Weighing the Elephant?" Read your class the description before having them attempt to solve the problem. After they've come up with an answer (or attempted to!), finish...
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Main Idea/Supporting Details Scavenger Hunt
Engage your class in a scavenger hunt to find the main ideas and supporting details in a text. They follow the teacher while s/he models how to determine main idea and find supporting details, and then they work independently. A fun way...
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Reading Connected Text Fluency (Passage)
Practice makes perfect when it comes to reading fluency! Walk your emerging readers through a familiar passage, slowly pointing to each word to keep every learner with you. While looking at a projected passage, scholars read one word at...
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Literature Review Paragraph
Tenth graders review the structural elements of a literary paragraph and organizational paragraph formats. They author a paragraph examining and reviewing a piece of literature currently being read in class. Students peer-review the...
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Recognizing Cause and Effect
Students define cause and effect and recognize an effect as something that happens as a result of a cause. They apply information they have learned about cause and effect to their study of literature.
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Describe a Character in a Story
Second graders should be familiar with characters of a story and adjectives. The students should have some knowledge of Kidspiration. After reading a story, they will use Kidspiration and create a character web to describe a character in...
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Twain's Hannibal
Young scholars use primary resources to examine the context the writings of Mark Twain. They criticize the resources for reliability, accuracy, perspective, relevancy, and authoritativeness.
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Reader Response
Fifth graders reflect upon different concepts of Language Arts while reading literature. In the novel Tuck Everlasting, by Natalie Babbitt, the characters discover a spring of eternal youth. After reading the first several chapters of...
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Founders of the Children's Rain Forest (Open Court)
Fifth graders read a narrative nonfiction piece describing the formation of the Students's Rain Forest organization from the SRA/McGraw-Hill Open Court Reading Anthology entitled, Cooperation and Competition. Founders of the Students's...
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Bearstone: A Novel Analysis
Seventh graders need to be able to distinguish between major and minor characters and need to have read the novel Bearstone and be familiar with the sequence of events as well as the qualities displayed by each character over the course...
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English Literature Circles
Students examine how to develop self-expression, inter-personal skills, and an Student have an appreciation of literature. This is accomplished through small groups, ideally located in a library setting where the teacher and the...