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Create Learning Experiences with The Polar Express
Center content-integrated lessons around the timeless holiday book, The Polar Express.
Curriculum Corner
Book Study: The Polar Express
All aboard! Pair a reading of The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg with a set of literacy activities. The packet of worksheets includes task cards, sorting activities, a synonym match, comparing and contrasting activities, writing...
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Compare and Contrast Art
Practice the skill of compare and contrast. First, show learners the different pairs of artwork in the project packet (included). Then, each learner chooses one of the pairs and finds the similarities and differences between the...
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Express Yourself Lesson Seed 14: Dedication
Connect Martin Luther King Jr's famous speech, "I Have a Dream," to The Cay by Theodore Taylor. Taylor refers to the speech in his dedication, which creates a natural segue into talking about the speech and how it relates to the novel....
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Compare and Contrast Cultures
Using informational text to make cross cultural comparisons is a great way to build a global understanding and comparative analysis skills. With several handy worksheets and a Venn diagram the class will read to make cross textual...
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Redistricting: Drawing the Lines
Difficult redistricting concepts are covered in a context that will make it understandable to your government scholars. They begin with a KWL on the term redistricting and then watch a video to answer some questions. They analyze...
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African Ecology and Art
Explore Samburu culture as learners examine art work by many artists and compare and contrast their styles. They view Kenyan images and find Kenya on the map. Students identify conflict in the animal world and draw animals and record in...
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A Practical Experiment In Colonization
Role-play and simulation exercises are fantastic ways to help learners understand the reality behind many social and historical events. Pretending they are colonists, upper graders choose a location, create a history, establish laws, and...
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About Life: The Photographs of Dorothea Lange Going to the Promised Land
To better understand the migrant experience during the Great Depression, pupils analyze two primary resources: photographs by Dorothea Lange and a U.S. Map that shows the Dust Bowl. They compare and contrast Lange's images to Steinbeck's...
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Forms of Exponential Expressions
Your young physicists analyze the forms of four equivalent exponential expressions representing an amount of a radioactive material in a substance. They show how each expression is equivalent to the others and what aspects of the decay...
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Lesson: Deities & Superheroes
Here's a twist on the old compare-and-contrast lesson. Budding art historians compare an Assyrian limestone relief to comic book superheroes. They discuss the similarities and differences in the three-dimensional relief to...
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Appropriate Words or Expressions in Context
In this entertaining presentation, middle school students consider a variety of ways to distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate words and expressions by looking at context clues. After going over some strategies, students take...
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Lesson: A Garden for Monet
To better understand artistic style and expression, your class compares two different paintings. They analyze each painting for style, technique, similarities, and differences. They then experiment with a variety of art materials and...
DePaul University
Contrast and Evaluate Fact and Opinion
How can you tell when an author is expression an opinion or stating a fact? Use two short reading selections to emphasize the difference between a statement that you can prove and one that you can't. The first passage explains food...
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Connectors of Addition and Contrast
For this conjunction interactive worksheet, students read pairs of sentences and decide which ones express similar ideas and which show contrasting ideas. They use the correct connectors from the drop down menus in 10 sentences. They...
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Comparing and Contrasting Images of Child Labor
Young scholars study child labor in the 19th century through one painting and multiple photographs. In discussion and writing, they consider the differences between photography and painting as mediums for expressing these attitudes.
English Worksheets Land
Great Discoveries
Compare and contrast two paragraphs describing Alexander Fleming's scientific discovery of penicillin using this compare-and-contrast reading learning exercise where scholars explain what happens through writing, decide whether the...
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The Polar Express
Students read The Polar Express.They prepare a painting on KidPix that shows what they predict The Polar Express will be about. They show their paintings and tell what they feel the story is about and discuss why it is important to...
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Dancing through Poetry
Get your class up and moving as they explore how to express movement and dance through words. Designed around two poems by Lillian Morrison about break dancing, the activity truly captures the creative and multi-sensory aspects of...
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Energy Crisis: Then and Now
Using political cartoons, scholars analyze the energy crisis of the 1970s and '80s, comparing and contrasting it to current tensions with oil. Display the 6 cartoons (linked) to the class, and demonstrate analysis using the worksheet...
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Beowulf: Songs of Ancient Heroes
Introduce your class to epic heroes with these activities for Beowulf. After watching a video clip, taking notes on heroes, and tracking characteristics of heroism throughout Beowulf, class members retell an episode of Beowulf using a...
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Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices by Paul Fleischman
Do your young readers know that poems can be performed as a team? They listen to a few examples from Paul Fleischman's book Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices, paying attention to how the how readers work together. They examine the...
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Drama: The New Friends
Reader's Theater is a great way to build fluency, intonation, and dramatic flare. The class reads the theater piece, "The New Friends" paying attention to how they express emotion and feeling as they read. They discuss the use of plot,...
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Informational Text: What's It All About?
With the Common Core State Standards' growing focus on informational text, it's the perfect time to showcase this PowerPoint to your team of teachers. It's 59 slides focus on seven best practice structures: reading-as-thinking,...