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High Frequency Word Scavenger Hunt
First graders participate in a word scavenger hunt. They practice saying and identifying letters. They work together to help each other.
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Story Map Situations
Third graders explore a variety of ways to represent text. They represent text in story maps while on the playground. Students depict the elements of a story on a story map. They create a poster for character, setting, problem, and the...
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Spelling Tag
Students participate in a tag game to practice their weekly spelling words. Five students are chosen as "it" and run around chasing the other students. When a student is tagged, he/she must freeze until the teacher asks him/her a...
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Reference Source Four Square
Fourth graders play a four-square game on the playground while reviewing four main references -- dictionary, atlas, thesaurus, and encyclopedia. Students must throw the playground ball in the correct "square" identifying the correct...
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Using Similes, Synonyms, and Antonyms
Children study similes, synonyms, and antonyms and identify examples in the book Quick as a Cricket by Audrey Wood. They write short stories about themselves using antonyms, synonyms, and comparisons of themselves to animals. They draw...
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Design a Book Cover
Students use the programs Pics4Learning and ImageBlender 3 to apply their knowledge of characters, plot, setting, symbolism, and conflict to design and create a book cover. Designed as a culminating literature activity.
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Apostrophes - possession
Students examine the use of apostrophes. From a given reading, students locate all words with apostrophes. Using these words as examples, students discuss rules for using apostrophes. Students match a person an an object from a list...
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Past Tense
Students explore the function of verbs when considering tense. They transform a text from future to past tense. Students read a story and discover it is written in past tense. In groups, students rewrite the verbs in the text to...
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Biographical Account--John Lennon
Students develop skills of biographical writing through research. Students analyze a video on John Lennon and his death. Students visit the website on John Lennon still recording details of his death.
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Create a Story May
First graders review the terms characters, setting and events in stories. They are shown how to access the Kidspiration Map, and how to add pictures in the correct spaces on the map. Students insert pictures in the map of the story...
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Using Picture Books to Teach the Holocaust
Students compare a photo of a child's room during the Holocaust to their room. In this WWII lesson, students read picture books and evaluate the roles of characters in the book. Students create either a poster about the roles, a movie...
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How to Avoid Having a Bad Day
Second graders explore cause and effect. They read Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. They discuss their own experiences with bad days. Students identify the causes and effects in the book. They write a letter...
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Pumpkins, Pumpkins, Pumpkins
Pupils identify and interpret the lifecycle and parts of the pumpkin. Students utitlize interactive ways to discover this process. Pupils create a big book of their own by researching further information about pumpkins and what makes a...
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Whose Shoes?
Students explore the meaning of objects. Students conduct research on the history of shoes, and write an imaginary story about a pair of shoes. They host a group presentation to share their stories.
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Designing Carousels
Students design a carousel for an amusement park. In collaborative groups they conduct research, develop a presentation, write a descriptive paragraph, evaluate design features, and draw an artistic rendering of their carousel.
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Adjectives
Young scholars are encouraged to think about the adjectives they choose and to steer away from adjectives that have become meaningless through overuse, such as "nice" and "good." They then add meaning and interest to sentences.
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Forest Floor Terrarium
Students study the aspects of a forest floor ecosystem, including decomposition, the water cycle, food webs, the needs of living things, and physical vs. chemical change over an extended period. In addition, students conduct observations...
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Comparison Contrast Essay
Learners compare and contrast the experience of the migrant worker as depicted in The Grapes of Wrath with the experiences of migrant children as depicted in the narratives and poems provided.
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Paragraph
Fourth graders work through detailed steps to complete a paragraph on the story "The Great Kapok Tree." They gather details from the story, and choose a standpoint for the paper using the details as a defense. The students write their...
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Perceptions - Difference
Learners explore different perceptions and differences between people. They incorporate the themes of stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination. Students comprehend that people have different perceptions of the same phenomenon. They...
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What is a Treaty?
Students examine the notion of terra nullius, the idea under which Australia was settled. Then they compare the economic and social outcomes for Australia's indigenous people under terra nullius with those of other indigenous peoples...
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Racist Behavior
Students brainstorm definition of racism, identify forms of racism, including direct and indirect, individual and institutional, and examine effects it may have. Students then discuss whether they have ever experienced or witnessed racism.
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Pieces of the World
Students locate Australia in relation to rest of world, read poem Pieces of the World by Mervyn James, explore kinds of journeys that Australians have made, and examine their effects - the emotions, the realities and the practicalities.
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V-R-A-N-T-S-I-S and Me
Students discuss themes and issues of culture, identity and self-esteem. They construct responses to those themes. Students profile themselves and try to answer questions about themselves tied to the themes of this lesson.