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Activity
Novelinks

Walk Two Moons: Guided Imagery

For Teachers 6th - 8th Standards
Sensory details can enhance the reading experience, especially during a guided imagery reading. Young readers close their eyes and listen to a passage from Sharon Creech's Walk Two Moons before responding to discussion questions and...
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Activity
Novelinks

Zach’s Lie: Guided Imagery

For Teachers 6th - 8th Standards
Close your eyes and picture a time where you decided to tell the truth to someone. What were you wearing? How did you feel? Such prompts begin a guided imagery activity for Zach's Lie. Directions for creating an environment conducive to...
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Activity
Novelinks

Words by Heart: Guided Imagery

For Teachers 6th - 8th Standards
Sad, depressed, miserable, inconsolable, forlorn: so many synonyms have a lot of variety with their connotations. Through the guided imagery activity, writers explore the use of connotation and its influence on imagery and description by...
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Activity
Curated OER

The Old Man and the Sea: Guided Imagery

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
What do you imagine when you think of the sea? Put on some ocean sounds, close your eyes, and listen to a guided meditation based on the imagery from The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. After class members listen to the...
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Lesson Plan
Brigham Young University

Out of the Dust: Guided Imagery

For Teachers 3rd - 7th
A guided imagery exercise is a great way to get readers thinking about writing. As part of their study of Out of the Dust, Karen Hesse’s 1998 Newbery Medal winning verse novel, class members listen to a reading of one of the poems from...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

My Antonia: Prereading Guided Imagery

For Teachers 9th - 12th
What makes a place safe? What makes a setting effective? Explore the safe spaces and descriptive language with a prereading activity for Willa Cather's My Antonia. The teacher describes his or her own safe space and then prompts pupils...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

"I Spy": Using Adjectives and Descriptive Phrases

For Teachers 3rd - 5th
Students define adjectives and use adjectives and descriptive phrases to write a descriptive paragraph. They write a description of a sensory item, and read and discuss a five senses chart. Students then complete a chart using adjectives...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Imagine That! Analyzing Imagery

For Teachers 7th - 9th
Poems by O. Henry, Marion Dane Bauer, Monty Roberts, and Langston Hughes provide the text for a study of symbolism, hyperbole, and imagery. Employing the “think-pair-share” strategy learners generate definitions of these terms and locate...
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Organizer
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Curated OER

Descriptive Writing: Parrot in the Oven

For Students 8th - 10th
After reading a selection from Victor Martinez's Parrot in the Oven, pupils use the graphic organizer to decipher the sensory details within the descriptive paragraph. They list various details under the appropriate sense ("see," "hear,"...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Descriptive Prompt: Precise Language

For Teachers 3rd - 8th Standards
Incorporate sensory details into a piece of descriptive writing. First, elementary and middle schoolers improve a piece of writing by using precise, vivid language, as well as appropriate word choice. They then listen to a variety of...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

How Do Authors Use Imagery to Shape Their Writing?

For Teachers 6th - 8th
Esther Forbes' award-winning Revolutionary War novel, Johnny Tremain and excerpts from Julie Otsuka's When the Emperor Was Divine are used to model how imagery brings alive the setting of a story. The young writers then craft their own...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Bud, Not Buddy: Guided Imagery Exercise

For Teachers 7th - 9th
Develop readers’ awareness of the visual power of language with a guided imagery exercise. Set the stage and create the mood with dim lights, soft music and potpourri. Then read the provided section of Bud, Not Buddy. Next, invite...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

My Antonia: Guided Imagery

For Teachers 9th - 12th
Willa Cather's novel My Antonia is full of vivid imagery. Encourage your pupils to visualize and translate images from the text into original writing with this guided imagery activity. Learners listen to an excerpt, take a moment to...
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Lesson Plan
Novelinks

The Giver: Guided Imagery

For Teachers 5th - 8th Standards
Guide your class through the imagery of Lois Lowry's The Giver with a peaceful meditative experience. After you create a serene environment in your class, read through a provided script in which kids sift through their favorite memories...
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Worksheet
Curated OER

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck: Animal Imagery

For Students 8th - 9th
Why does Steinbeck use animal imagery to describe Lennie in Of Mice and Men? Readers examine a series of descriptions and comment on the effect Steinbeck creates with his word choice. 
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Activity
Novelinks

Wildwood Dancing: Guided Imagery

For Teachers 9th - 12th
Reader's of Wildwood Dancing engage in a guided imagery exercise designed to encourage them to visualize the setting of Juliet Marillier's young adult fantasy novel.
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Language Arts: Telling a Painting's Story

For Teachers 7th - 12th
Use art museum paintings as inspiration for your class's creative writing works. Observing the paintings closely, middle and high schoolers list details and write descriptions. Their completed stories are displayed on bulletin boards...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Story Telling through Photography

For Teachers 4th - 9th
Use this writing and photography lesson plan in your descriptive writing unit. Elementary and middle schoolers write and create a story line incorporating photos from Inspiration or their own personal photos. They experiment with...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Perfecting My Pal's Poe Paragraph

For Teachers 9th - 12th
After analyzing the compelling first paragraph of Edgar Allen Poe's short story "The Masque of the Red Death," high schoolers draft original opening paragraphs using techniques identified Poe's writing. The relationship between suspense...
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Worksheet
Curated OER

Analyzing Poetry

For Students 10th - 12th
Use this poetry analysis worksheet to help your learners understand a poem of their or your choosing. This resource asks class members to summarize the poem and analyze it by looking at voice, word choice, imagery, and theme. The...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Lesson Plan for C.S Lewis’ The Magician’s Nephew

For Teachers 4th - 5th
Here is a lesson that incorporates music writing, and reading literature. The class reads chapter eight from the C.S. Lewis classic The Magician's Nephew. Then, just like in the story, they use music as inspiration to create (write)...
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PPT
Curated OER

Literary Terms

For Teachers 11th - Higher Ed
Seriously, 93 slides of literary terms? Yes, and well worth the time, although perhaps not all at once. The beauty here is in the concise, easy-to-understand definitions for such well-known terms as imagery and personification, as well...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

A Seashell Lesson: Writing for Detail and the Scientific Process

For Teachers 3rd - 8th
Practice descriptive language in this lesson, which prompts elementary and middle schoolers to write detailed descriptive sentences describing a seashell. They write a description of a shell, create an illustration, and other students...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Reliving History through Slave Narratives

For Teachers 5th - 9th
Helpful for an American literature or history unit, this lesson prompts middle schoolers to examine slavery in the United States. They read slave narratives that were part of the Federal Writers' Project and then conduct their own...