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Race into Fluency!
Elementary learners practice reading short passages to increase their fluency. They work in pairs to do repeated readings of Jane and Babe, recording their times. They switch roles and time one another in an effort to decrease the...
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Visualize and Draw to Increase Comprehension
Improve readers' comprehension with a pair of visualization opportunities. First they listen, eyes closed, as you read a description from Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach, and discuss ideas about what they "see." After you read...
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Elephant Eggs
Study the short and long sounds of the letter e. Learners will practice words and tongue twisters using both the short and long vowel /e/. They use letter boxes and letter tiles to spell words containing the target sound. To close the...
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The Creaky Door Says "ehhhh"
Study the long vowel sound /e/, as in a creaky door noise. Children repeat the sound and learn a chant. They use letters in letterboxes to make words with the /e/ sound before reading a book and writing a message about their favorite...
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Character Poems Self-Assessment
Use this worksheet to help your learners reflect on their work on a characterization assignment. They answer five questions about personality traits of the character of their choice as supported by the poem.
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John Steinbeck
This presentation is made up of basic information about John Steinbeck including historical background and excerpts from several of his novels. It is an overview of his life and times. Two of the slides list several links to...
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Nontraditional Job Opportunities
As your learners prepare to enter the workforce, address some common stereotypes that may be limiting their professional goals. The class brainstorms gender-stereotyped careers, exploring where those ideas originate. They complete a job...
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Paragraph Development Exercise: Simple to Complex
Looking for an organizational writing pattern to teach your class? Consider showing them how to structure a paragraph using the complexity of ideas as a guide. Provide the example included here to give them an idea of what is...
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Paragraph Development Exercise: Illustrating the Idea
How can young writers make their writing engaging? They might paint a picture for the reader through specific examples or illustrations. A sample paragraph is provided here. Class members can use this as a model as they compose a...
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Paragraph Development Exercise: Familiar to Unfamiliar
Demonstrate how to draw in readers by starting a paragraph with a familiar topic, and then moving into the more complex ideas after they are already engaged. Writers can read over the example, which is a bit abstract and might need...
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Paragraph Development Exercise: Analogy
Apply analogy to paragraph writing. After reviewing what an analogy is and how it can be used, show your class the example. Writers can use the sample as a model as they compose their own paragraph that explains an idea through an analogy.
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Paragraph Development Exercise: Climactic or Emphatic Order
Exercise paragraph writing by focusing on the impact of each statement or idea. For this organizational pattern, writers compose their paragraphs by increasing the force of each idea so that the most important idea is the concluding...
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Paragraph Development Exercise: Specific to General
Details, details, details. That's what comes first in this style of paragraph. Writers think of supporting details, list them, and then compose a general statement that encompasses all of the details. A fairly basic resource, use this to...
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Paragraph Development Exercise: Problem to Answer
Paragraphs need structure, and here is one possibility! Ask writers to begin their paragraph with a problem, explore several possibilities in the middle of the paragraph, and end the paragraph with the solution. A sample paragraph is...
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Paragraph Development Exercise: Chronological Order
People use time to organize their days and structure their lives. Why not use it to structure a paragraph? Chronological order is logical and fairly straightforward. Ask class members to first read the provided example and then write...
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Paragraph Development Exercise: Comparison
Teach class members how to use comparison in their writing to clarify and enrich ideas. Referring back to the brief description and the sample paragraph, writers develop a paragraph that uses comparison effectively. More scaffolding and...
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Paragraph Development Exercise: Cause to Effect
Focus on logical paragraph writing and ask your class to write cause and effect paragraphs. To get started, learners read information about the format as well as an example. While there is some basic information about how to structure...
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Sentence Fragments
Tired of reading fragments in your pupils' writing? Assign the activity here to clarify the difference between a sentence and a fragment. Enrich the exercise with information about subject and verb and some more examples of fragments and...
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Paragraph Development Exercise: Contrast
After reading an example, writers compose a paragraph that focuses on contrasting ideas. The resource starts out with some information about topic ideas and functional ideas, but there could be more explanation. Use this as a warm-up...
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Adjective Clauses
Practice identifying dependent adjective clauses with your class. Before providing this basic activity, make sure that your pupils are familiar with the grammatical terms dependent clause, adjective, and adjective clause. Once class...
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Appositives
Instruct your class on appositives and they will be ready to complete this sentence-combining activity. Given two sentences, one of which describes the subject in detail, pupils are asked to incorporate the second sentence into the first...
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Direct Objects
In order for this activity to be attainable for pupils, you will need to provide instruction on direct objects, and you might model the first few sentences. Once class members are ready, set them off to underline the direct objects in...
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Writing and Reading Center #1: Sentence Combining
Plagued with a horde of short, choppy sentences? Banish simplistic patterns from the writings of your pupils by modeling for them how to combine sentences to create lively, more interesting prose. Then provide them with a sentence...
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Compound Sentences
Combine sentences using coordinating conjunctions to create compound sentences with your class! A straightforward activity, this resource provides a series of sentence pairs that are meant to be combined using one of the following: for,...