A lesson help scholars identify emotions through facial expressions. After a friendly puppet reads scholars a poem all about feelings, learners act out how they would feel when a specific action happens to them. Participants watch and...

Dim the lights, take a deep breath, and press play to explore the emotions and memories that music elicits. Class members begin using relaxation techniques designed to create a positive listening experience. As music plays, learners...

Practice makes proficient! Using a journal of their choice, authors organize pages, then begin their writing journey of on-going writing practice in which they compose all poetic forms including diamante, limerick, free verse, and more!

The stated goal of this unit is to use poetry to "improve the emotional health of young people." Budding poets read and then supply their own lines for poems that deal with alienation, loneliness, and rejection.

Arthur Sze's poem, "The Shapes of Leaves," encourages young scholars to notice and speak for others who "do not speak." The instructional activity begins with pupils writing about a tree that they really like. The class then examines an...

Class members come together to study Amanda Gorman's poem "New Day's Lyric." After a close reading of the poem, learners watch a video of Gorman reading her poem, and then craft additional lines for the poem where they offer suggestions...

Budding poets compose an original free verse poem. Encouraged to use personification and alliteration, scholars read over three tips and examples then try their hand at drafting a poem of their own style.  

Learners gain insight into how songs and poems express feelings of injustice. They also learn about literary devices and types of poems and make a personal connection when they write their own free verse poems about injustice.

Social classes may be explicitly defined as in a caste system or based more informally on such ideas as wealth or education. After reading and discussing an article about one woman's experience with trying to fit into a system different...

Help scholars manage stress with an activity that prompts them to think of their feelings as clouds floating over their heads. Learners identify their feelings, focus on their responses, and allow them to float away.

An exercise offers young scholars a coping skill to manage stress or other strong emotions. Learners identify the emotion, focus on how their body feels physically, then pretend they are holding a balloon over their heads, blow their...

How do Poe's choices of imagery, rhythm and rhyme scheme, and structure help build the desired single effect of "The Raven"? After listening to a dramatic reading of the poem, class members consider whether Poe's choices do...

A self-management exercise allows scholars to mindfully pause the action by identifying emotions and changing their thought processes. When pupils feel strongly about something, they imagine themselves as a remote they can pause to...

Have everything you need to know about the elements of poetry with a nine-page handout. Split into four categories—word sounds, meanings, arrangement, and imagery—budding poets may reference terms, read definitions, descriptions, and...

What would the world be like if everyone expressed gratitude? Pupils explore the concept by watching a motivating time-lapse video. Scholars express appreciation by handing out tokens of gratitude, and then write about their...

A coping skill helps to manage emotions. Young scholars pretend they are a remote control. When they feel strongly about something, they pause their actions, take a deep breath, reflect, and press play to get back to what they were doing.

Six lessons comprise a unit about Roald Dahl's George's Marvelous Medicine. Over time, scholars explore themes such as the power of words, exciting writing, and mixed feelings. They examine the writing's literary devices, persuasive...

The fifth activity in the Amani Project series, another Harmony Break, has participants demonstrate a mood shift. They begin by drumming in a way that indicates their current feelings. They then model a change in mood by transitioning...

To prepare for crafting their own memoir, class members examine poetry by Margaret Atwood, Billy Collins, Robert Hayden, and Claude McKay, stories by Richard Rodriquez and Willa Cather, and Barry Levinson's film Avalon. They examine...

Should primary graders have their own computers? Should animals be kept in captivity? Young writers learn how to develop and support a claim in this short unit on persuasive writing.

After examining winning entries to the Nicholas A. Virgilio Memorial Haiku Competition, young poets try their hand at this fixed form.