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A Primary Source Picture Book
Travel through Europe with ten-year-old Teddy Roosevelt in this writing activity, which uses the picture book My Tour of Europe: by Teddy Roosevelt, by Ellen Jackson. After reading the book, readers compare it to passages from The...
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Adding Strong Voice to Your Writing
Identify examples of strong voice in popular picture books. Young authors add voice to their writing and revise their own writing. In addition, they share their writing with their peers.
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All About Me Books
Young authors write books about themselves using one of the identified types of literature and the writing process. They identify the common characteristics among the books in each group, edit, and gift their books to a younger student.
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Picture Books, Retelling, and Writing
Students create stories using only pictures. In this visual storytelling lesson, students read Pancakes for Breakfast by Tomie de Paola and analyze the wordless story. Students create new text for the book by writing on sticky notes.
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Making Movable Books
Investigate the parts of a book and in particular, the pop-up, tab, wheel, and or accordion features that can be added to a book to move and enhance the storyline. This is a three lesson unit.
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Straight to the Source
Research famous figures from history through the primary sources they created! Explore how these types of documents can enrich our study of the past with your middle and high school learners. They create picture books to illustrate...
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Strong Descriptive Writing: James and the Giant Peach
Support your writers! Clear procedures and appropriate support make this a superb resource for elementary writing instruction. Ready your class to compose original descriptive paragraphs inspired by the episode in Roald Dahl's James and...
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Creating Found Poetry From Picture Books
Students use picture books to identify poetic elements and word choice. They create a "found poem".
American Immigration Law Foundation
No Pretty Pictures
Here is a nice set of activities and discussion questions to accompany your class reading of No Pretty Pictures, a memoir of a young girl's experiences and struggle for survival during the Holocaust.
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Picture This - Stars Over Hoke
The classroom becomes a safe and inclusive place for your ELLs as they create documents about their lives. Learners create, read, and present story books based on their own personal experiences. They use digital cameras to take...
Reed Novel Studies
Theodore Boone - Kid Lawyer: Novel Study
A child lawyer is exactly what people need ... not! With the novel study for John Grisham's Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer, pupils use their imaginations to create their own examples of sarcasm. They also research a chosen famous lawyer and...
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Write a Story
Elementary writers will create short stories with their classmates' help, publishing the books using computer programs. The first learner writes a sentence to start the story, and each classmate adds a sentence to the story. The original...
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Magical Math-ical Dragon
Young scholars read picture books in which mathematics and solutions to math problems play a role in the action. After discussing the books and how the author used math problems to tell a story, they create their own magical, math-ical...
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Fiction Book Report
Fourth graders review a fictional book in which they give an overview of the characters and storyline. Microsoft Word is used to type a final draft of their review and to create a cover page with a picture.
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Heroes in History - ABC Book
Youngsters research information about people in history that we recognize as heroes. They write short biographies about their assigned heroes, and create an ABC book. This is an ambitious project becausev26 people must be chosen and...
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Using Wordless Comics To Help Create Meaning in Reading
Use picture cues as a tool in order to create meaning along with text. With a wordless comic, young illustrators discuss the main idea and character traits, and independently write a summary for a page of a wordless comic. This strategy...
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The Island of the Skog
"Students read "The Island of the Skog." Prior to reading, students observe the book cover, predict the events of the story, and discuss what a skog may look like. Students make footprints in play dough and observe the differences...
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The Shape of Things
Fourth graders develop their writing skills. In this paragraph structure lesson, 4th graders research natural disasters, compile their findings, create mobiles and write stories based on the mobiles.
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Picture Dictionary
Students write and contribute one page for a class picture dictionary. They discuss how to alphabetize words, and examine both regular and picture dictionaries and how they are organized. Next they create a page for the class dictionary...
Owl Teacher
Five Themes of Geography Book Project
Young geographers choose a country to research and design a book explaining how their country applies to the five themes of geography, including three facts or details for each of the themes.
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Create a Cookbook
Trios write, design, and produce cookbooks. In a truly collaborative project, they choose what content to include, contribute recipes, and decide on formatting. Then, they reformat all recipes to ensure consistent style, publish the...
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Analyzing Folklore: Redwall
Brian Jacques’ novel Redwall provides the focus for a series of lessons involving the analysis of folklore. Adopting the persona of a character, groups write letters in the voice of their character, assemble a collage using Microsoft...
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Comic Book Project
Students write a comic. In this writing lesson, students discuss comic books and why they continue to be so popular. Students create a comic book using an imaginary character. Students must present a problem and solution in their comic.
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My School Year Memory Book
Students create memory books of what they have learned and experienced to use throughout the school year using photographs taken of the them as they are involved in different tpes of activities such as art projects, reading groups, seat...