Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 12: Story Event
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....
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 18: Investigate
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...
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 13: Character Development 2
Building upon prior lessons in the series, this reading and writing exercise requires pupils to look back at their own writing, track character development in the novel The Cay, and analyze how Phillip has changed. The reading focus is...
Curated OER
Adapting Literary Learning Methods with the Grimm Fairy Tales
Learners use Grimm's tales to explore theme, thesis statement, textual analysis, and historical context.
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 6 Close Reading
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...
Curated OER
The Outsiders Essay Question Options
Extend your study of The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton with an essay. Pupils can choose one of the three prompts provided on this page and write about either characterization, conflict, or theme. Each prompt includes a brief definition of the...
Curated OER
Jack London's The Call of the Wild: "Nature Faker"?
Students take a stand on whether or not London could be dubbed a "nature faker." They support their position with evidence either historical or from the text. Students write an essay, complete with hypothesis and textual support, on...
Curated OER
Whirligig Lollapalooza
Using a cut-out template of a whirligig, emerging engineers experiment with flight behavior. After you teach them the concepts of force, air resistance, and lift, they discuss what variables on the whirligigs might be changed in order to...
Curriculum Corner
ELA Common Core Checklists for K-6
In the hustle and bustle of life in the classroom, it's easy for teachers to lose track of the standards they have taught, and those that still need to be addressed. This Common Core checklist provides educators with an easy-to-use...
National Endowment for the Humanities
Galileo: Revealing the Universe
To gain an understanding of the significance of Galileo Galilei's revolutionary ideas, class members watch the short video "Stargazing Before Galileo," and conduct a close reading of Galileo's Sidereal Messsenger. They then compare...
Dr. Seuss Enterprises
Dr. Seuss in the Classroom
Explore the works of Dr. Seuss, such as Horton Hears a Who, Horton Hatches and Egg, The Sneetches and Other Stories, The Lorax, The Butter Battle Book, and Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories. Each story lesson includes reading...
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 14: Dedication
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....
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 2
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...
Curated OER
A Soldier's View of the American Civil War
Study and research the American Civil War in this explanatory writing instructional activity. Middle schoolers complete six activities to learn about the American Civil War and soldiers' views of the war. The instructional activity...
National Math + Science Initative
Reading an Informational Text: "It All Started with Sputnik"
Sputnik was one of the greatest scientific advancements of the 1950s, and this reading lesson does it justice. Pupils start off with pre-reading questions and a video. They then read an excerpt from an article, which is accompanied by...
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 15: Theme
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...
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 11: Setting
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...
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 1
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...
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 8: Character
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...
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 17: Obituary
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...
Curated OER
Uniform Design
Learners investigate the military by examining their uniforms. In this design lesson, students analyze the military uniforms from different locations and time periods. Learners create new ideas for current military uniforms.
Polk Bros Foundation
I Can Compare and Contrast
Work with your class to fill out this Venn diagram. Pupils can compare and contrast any two things and then write a short paragraph about the relationship demonstrated in their diagram.
Alabama Learning Exchange
Light Is
Students explore the properties of light. In this light lesson, students investigate visible light by viewing a website, examining an electromagnetic spectrum chart, and observing light demonstrations. Students write about their...
Curated OER
Analysis Through Character Action/Beliefs
Students explore characterization. In this characterization lesson, students give analytical responses to questions and determine a character's beliefs. Students use the school mission statement to develop two beliefs that the statement...