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ELA.CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.2
There is nothing more frustrating than discussing theme in literature, and now the Common Core requires that your learners determine two or more, and discuss the development of it throughout the text. This is crazy, but manageable with...
National History Day
Propaganda Posters of World War I: Analyzing the Methods Behind the Images
The power of a picture. During the events surrounding World War I, propaganda posters were widely distributed in American society to sway the emotions of its citizens. By analyzing World War I propaganda posters in the first installment...
Curated OER
Zoo Animals
In this zoo animals worksheet, students create five new animals and write the zoological descriptions of them following a detailed description on how to complete the assignment. Students practice using Latin words and find the animals...
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Black Bayou Lake Short Story
Tenth graders use Microsoft Word to create an original short story. The setting must be Black Bayou Lake National Wildlife Refuge. The characters must be animals found at Black Bayou Lake National Wildlife Refuge. The story must contain...
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"Let's Write a Song"
Fourth graders brainstorm ideas that answer the question, "What is a song?" They determine the parts of a song, read lyrics, and listen to a song while identifying the chorus. They repeat the procedure with a new song before working in...
Curated OER
Technology's Influence on Language
Students use Internet resources to examine the influence of technological terminology on English and other languages.
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How Close Can We Get?
Fourth graders guide themselves through the traditional outline structure by reassembling papers, which have been cut into separate sentences. They see how close they've come to the original paper and evaluate their achievement.
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The Other Tall Tales
Students research many different tall tales. They retell the tale in their own words and create an orginal tale of their own. They share their tall with the class along with illustrations.
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The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon
Twelfth graders deduce the motivation behind and meaning of certain behaviors, conversations and poetry. Students analyze culture's value system. Students compare and contrast Anglo Saxon court culture, Medieval court culture, Medieval...
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Narrative Strategies
Sixth graders explore strategies authors use to make characters and setting seem real to readers. They develop characters and describe setting in original narratives. Students read myths and determine common themes found in myths from...
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Tell Me a Story
Tenth graders read short story, "The Storyteller" by Saki, and expand on concept of stories for students by reading and evaluating several popular students's stories as well as writing their own original students's stories.
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Suddenly!
Third graders explore the text "Suddenly." They create a new version of the story using the predictable patterns from the original story. Students share their stories with the rest of the class.
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Tell Me a Whopper!
Sixth graders investigate tall tales as a literary genre. They listen to a number of tall tales to discover how exaggeration is used as a story element. They write and publish a tall tale using word processing software. They illustrate...
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Which One Doesn't Belong?
Third graders identify words that are related with 80% accuracy. Given a list of four vocabulary words, 3rd graders identify specific relationships between three of the four words. They also identify which of the four words are not...
Curated OER
Logos
Students create a presentation incorporating an originally created logo to advertise a new drink product. After creating their logo, students produce create an advertising campaign for their new product. Advertisements are presented to...
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Context Clues Lesson Plan
Students are introduced to four strategies of context clues. While reading, they use all four strategies in different sections of the reading to determine the meaning of words they are unfamiliar with. To end the lesson, they share new...
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When A Says Its Name
Students are introduced to the concept of vowel digraphs. They identify the digraph /ai/ in spoken language. After a brief discussion, students apply the rule for reading and spelling words containing the /ai/ digraph by playing word bingo.
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Elephants Enjoy Eating Eggs
Students recognize the short vowel e in written and spoken language. Through listening and matching activities, they discriminate the vowel sound /e/ from other phonemes. Students practice using the phoneme and letter in words by writing...
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Desktop Spelling
Students participate in a spelling drill. In this spelling lesson, students correctly spell the word that is called out and remain standing if they spell the word correctly.
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Welcome to Paradise
Fifth graders listen to Lynne Cherry's novel, The River Ran Wild. They work in two groups one of whom represents the native people and the other represents the English settlers from the book. They look at the geography of the settlement...
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Monkey See, Monkey Write
Second graders create an original travel brochure after a fieldtrip to a zoo.
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Prairie Activity: Imagist Prairie Poems
Students write an imagist prairie poem. They explore various websites, view images of prairies, read examples of poems, and write an original poem that creates a mental image in the mind of the listener through the use of descriptive...
Curated OER
Encounter with a Skull (Tae dokuro, 1890)
Young scholars read and analyze a short story by Koda Rohan. They conduct research, read and discuss a biography of the author, identify examples of Japanese and Buddhist symbolism in the story, and write an original story.