Curated OER
Compare and Contrast Poems vs. Lyrics
Combine your pupils' love of music with their growing knowledge of poetry! First, have them bring in their favorite songs for a discussion on word choice and literary devices. Then, use a Venn Diagram to compare and contrast the...
Curated OER
Multiple Meaning Words
Using context clues is an important practice when deciphering words with multiple meanings. There are ten multiple choice questions in this PowerPoint to test students on reading the context of a sentence. Tip: Use this presentation...
K12 Reader
Using Collective Nouns
What do you call a group of soccer players? Or a bunch of bees? Young grammarians review eight sentences and add the correct collective noun based on the context clues they observe.
Curated OER
Personal Experience Narratives
Help your middle schoolers identify personal experience narratives in their own lives through telling stories themselves and from family members or other adults. They study personal experience narratives in Swapping Stories and compare...
Curated OER
Verb Tenses
Discover how to use proper verb tenses with context clues. Five sentences help first graders decide if they should use -ed or -ing to end simple verbs. Each sentence provides context clues to indicate the time. Use the resource in...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Comprehension: Text Analysis, Fact or Opinion Football
Touchdown! Try out this game to help your learners differentiate between fact and opinion. In pairs, pupils switch off reading cards to one another. Learners determine if the sentences on the cards are facts or opinions and continue...
University of North Carolina
Music
Music is a universal pleasure, but writing about it can be a little trickier. An informative handout discusses common types of music writing assignments that one might encounter in a college-level course. Individuals read about musical...
US Institute of Peace
Observing Conflict
Identifying conflict is important, but how do you handle conflict when it comes? Students use a plot mountain to graph two role-play scenarios about interpersonal conflicts.
Curated OER
Idioms
Use this podcast lesson to familiarize scholars with the characteristics, history, and cultural implications of idioms. As part of the Walking Classroom curriculum, kids listen to a 12-minute podcast as they walk around campus. If you...
Curated OER
Conflict Resolution
Lessons on how to deal with bullying and conflict are very important for young learners. This one sets up role-playing situations which present conflicts that occur between kids. Several role-play situations are set up, and they should...
Curated OER
Alliteration
Students recognize, identify and produce words that begin with the /sp/ sound. They decorate objects that have the /sp/ sound with items that have the /sp/ sound. Students create phrases with the /sp/ sound that describe the object...
Curated OER
Questions
Explore end punctuation with this multi-step learning exercise on question marks. Scholars begin by finishing 10 sentences with either a period or a question mark. Consider discussing patterns they see at this point (first word,...
EngageNY
Grade 9 ELA Module 2, Unit 2, Lesson 18
The punishment must fit the crime, even for a king. Sophocles' Oedipus the King meets its grisly end with a instructional activity that focuses on the conclusion of the play and Oedipus' self-assigned punishment. Learners connect the...
K12 Reader
For Thanksgiving: Add the Nouns and Adjectives
The plump flower was on the dining table? This is just one of many fun sentence combinations kids can make using this Thanksgiving-themed sentence frame worksheet. They use a word bank to insert nouns and adjectives into six sentences.
Curated OER
Go Fish For Blends and Digraphs
Youngsters practice using blends and digraphs. In this early reading lesson, students play a game of "Go Fish" using words that contain a blend or digraph. This allows them to practice recognizing the word and using it in a sentence.
Novelinks
The Tempest: QAR
Asking questions about a text is an effective way to improve reading comprehension. Apply the Question Answer Response strategy to your unit on William Shakespeare's The Tempest. As kids read each passage, they decide if the answer...
Curated OER
Identifying Theme
What's theme, and can texts of every length have one? Explore the themes of fives short reading passages with your middle school class. Encourage them to highlight specific places in the text where they recognized the theme.
Scouts
The Deadly Picnic: A Lab on Deductive Reasoning
Whodunnit? Find out who killed Mr. Brooks through a logical examination of evidence. Class members fill out a couple of data tables to help them pin down the suspect. After they've figured out just who the culprit is, pupils compose...
Gourmet Curriculum Press
Author's Purpose
Who knew determining author's purpose could be turned into a game? Four teams compete to correctly identify the author's purpose for writing a series of passages.
Reading Resource
Flower Building Long Vowel Game
Reading can be as lovely as a walk through the garden! Sets of flowers host words that share long vowel sounds, which kids match to the correct flowerpots.
British Council
Forced to Wear a Skirt
What's the dress code? Scholars read brief texts about school uniforms and discuss opinions for and against them. Pupils then work with a partner to role play a conversation about school uniforms.
Curated OER
Hamlet's Soliloquy
Everyone is familiar with the beginning of Hamlet's soliloquy, "To be or not to be..." While reading Hamlet, help your middle schoolers analyze the lines that follow, but how do you help them make personal connections to the text? Use...
Curated OER
Our Computers, Ourselves: Imagining the Digital Lives of Authors and Characters
The guiding question for this lesson is "Do computers and their contents shape who we are?" Open with a selection of Apple's commercials to introduce stereotypes and people's relationships with their computers. Then, read the attached...
August House
Anansi And Turtle Go To Dinner
That tricky Anansi! Join him and Turtle in the story Anansi and Turtle Go to Dinner by Bobby and Sherry Norfolk, based on the African folktale. Kids answer comprehension questions and sing songs about spiders before creating spider...