The first lesson of a five-lesson unit designed for eighth graders has class members reading and watching a video of Edgar Allen Poe's narrative poem, "The Raven." They then craft their narrative poem, illustrate it, and share their work...

Introduce young poets to Blackout Poetry. Much like Found Poems, Blackout Poetry challenges scholars to rethink the process writers may use to craft their poems. After watching a short video in which poet Austin Kleon describes his...

Class members closely examine the use of words in the poems "Inside Out" and "Back Again" to determine if different words would create more powerful poetry. They then conduct peer reviews of the poems they created and offer suggestions...

Walt Whitman's "Captain, My Captain" and Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" provide seventh graders with examples of odes. After reading and discussing these and other examples, young poets craft an ode and respond to the ode of a...

Peer editors review critique expectations before offering feedback on each other's two-voice poems. They record their feedback on peer critique recording forms, and then begin revising their poems. 

Scholars read their poems to their research teams as their final performance task. The teams listen and give feedback on the flow between the two poems. Writers then take the feedback from their teams and revise their poems before...

Budding poets create two acrostic poems, one for their name and another using a word of their choice. Over the course of five days, scholars compose, revise, publish, and share their work with their peers.

After reading Loree Leedy's There's a Frog in My Throat: 440 Animal Sayings a Little Bird Told Me, kids create and illustrate their own poems that convey the meaning of an idiom. The poems are then transferred into Shutterfly's Photo...

Whether the planks hide the beating of a hideous heart or they break away to the madness beneath, their presence makes itself known in the final instructional activity of a literary analysis unit. Having gathered textual evidence from...

"Bullying and Prejudice" and "Do You Cyber Bully," two lessons from a complete Bully Free program, serve as samples of the approach used in a unit designed to bring awareness to and to combat bullying. Each lesson asks class...

Two lessons, "What Does Cyber Bullying Look Like?" and "Factors Influencing My Reporting the Bullying of Others," serve as examples of the 12 included in a Bully Free curriculum. Each plan includes discussion questions, an activity,...

It takes courage to stand up to bullies. Two sample lessons from a complete Bully Free curriculum, "Courageous and Brave Bystanders" and "Assertiveness Skills for Bullied Students and Empowered Bystanders" provide participants with...

Two sample lessons from a curriculum unit on bullying provide high school seniors with an opportunity to assess their online and cell phone behavior and to consider how they can offer support to bullied students. Each plan includes an...