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Don't Let the Earth Down
Although recycling is definitely beneficial, reducing our waste and conserving our natural resources should really be the focus of environmentalists. Encourage the future generation to create a public service announcement about a...
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Stir Up a Character Analysis Recipe
What ingredients make up a character? A cup of honesty, a dash of humor, a pinch of cynicism? Based on real cookbooks they review in class, learners at any grade level three and up write recipes to describe characters familiar to your...
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Technology Benchmark
Students examine examples of writing samples from NCS Mentor and discuss with students what makes each writing piece earn points. They grade a writing sample on the program and discuss various simple machines and their components.
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The Mail Race
Learners create friendly letters and surveys to other schools. In this letter writing lesson, students format friendly letters to other school and request a reply. Learners chart the replies on a map and share information from the...
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Who Wrote That?
Scholars creatively respond to writing prompts. They respond to writing prompts that reveal clues regarding their personalities and then use the prompts written in class to guess the prompts that belong to their classmates.
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How To Grow Red Seaweed
Students explore ocean biology by participating in a plant growing activity. In this seaweed lesson, students identify the importance and uses of seaweed in the ocean and examine different seaweed samples. Students utilize an aquarium,...
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Traveling Community Journal Project
Learners create an online "community journal". In this communities instructional activity, students use a writing template to send e-mail to various people to learn more about their community. The journal is passed from person to person.
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Exploring the Galapagos
Students explore the species found in the Galapagos Islands and practice descriptive writing skills by creating a sample journal. They create a fictional journal that documents the places they visit and the species they encounter.
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What's the Big Idea?
Young scholars choose a paragraph from a book of their choice, identify the main idea, and draw an illustration of the main idea. They write original paragraphs, illustrate them, and trade with a partner, identifying the main idea of the...
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Building Believable Characters
Students use descriptive strategies such as physical descriptions, background, and comparison of characters when writing narratives. They develop the topic with supporting details and precise diction to paint a visual image in the...
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Telling a Story
Students create a story about a picture. In this writing lesson, students select a picture and write a story about what happened in the picture. Students are encouraged to write a story with a beginning, middle, and end.
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Judging a Book by Its Cover
Students explore the relationship between the form of books and the content inside. For this book exploration lesson, students use a piece of their creative writing as inspiration; they author a written book and design a cover that...
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Reporting from the Front Lines
Students examine the battle of Gettysburg as they write news articles. For this Battle of Gettysburg lesson, students become familiar with the job of the news reporter as they report on the events of the Battle of Gettysburg as they...
Reed Novel Studies
The Homework Machine: Novel Study
Do opposites really attract? The D Squad in The Homework Machine includes of a quad of opposites. The group, made up of a teacher's pet, a geek, a class clown, and a slacker, make use of a machine to do their homework. In response to the...
Reed Novel Studies
Stone Fox: Novel Study
Wyoming has the lowest population of all 50 states. Using the novel study for Stone Fox by John Reynolds Gardiner, pupils create brochures to attract visitors to the state, which is the setting for the novel. Additionally, they answer...
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Strategies for Organization and Elaboration of Personal Narrative
Personal narrative writing is usually a favorite form of writing for youngsters because they get to write about a personal experience. The instructional activity here asks pupils to take a piece of narrative writing and improve it by...
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Voice Trait: Who Is Talking?
Students recognize the difficulty of knowing who wrote a letter from the envelope. In this writing "voice" lesson, students understand the meaning of voice in writing and detect who the writers are in a worksheet.
Brockman Elementary School
Living History Timeline
As part of a living history research project, learners research a chosen historical figure that they will study and physically represent in a gallery walk. This resource includes a project description, letter to parents, rubric, and...
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Like It Or Not?
Write a review of the film adaptation of Holes. After viewing the film, your young reviewers make recommendations about viewing the film. Using details to support their opinions, they highlight the important parts of the movie without...
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"Me" Resource
Learners elucidate themselves by writing up to six entries in different formats. Some formatting choices include a dictionary, encyclopedia, or atlas entry, a magazine article, a newspaper article, and a table of contents. Some...
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Dream Bed
Students design and write descriptions of imaginary beds. For this interior design lesson, students use various art materials such as paint, fabric, boxes, and string to create a model of a bed. Students use descriptive words to write a...
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I Am, Am Not! Project
Get your class writing with this project idea. Kids choose two pictures of objects that are like them and two pictures of objects that are not like them to entice their readers. Then, they write an informative paragraph describing each...
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Comma Comments
Upper elementary and middle schoolers, in pairs, use PowerPoint to link a button to every comma within a piece of writing. The button links to a slide explaining why the comma was used. They present their slides to the class.
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Identifying and Using Parts of Speech in Writing: Technology, Word Processing
Students identify and suggest suitable parts of speech to fill in the blanks in a prepared text (the text can easily be tailored to language ability and desired subject). They use word processing to edit the text.