Curated OER
Word Pair Analogies 2
Analogies deepen the understanding of words. Help your English language learners (or native speakers studying vocabulary) develop their understanding of words like agoraphobia, brevity, and hieroglyphics. A bridge sentence is provided...
Scholastic
Shy
Help your pupils examine their feelings with the materials here. The class can first read the included poem about a shy person and then respond to one or more of the six included writing prompts.
Curated OER
Open Your Eyes Wide-Shut
Students improve their language skills through 11 activities. In this language skills lesson, students listen to picture books, answer questions about elements of a story, enhance their vocabulary and grammar skills, use 5 W questions,...
Curated OER
Media Literacy Skills
You're on camera! Third graders find a news story and research it to get more information. Everyone uses their found information to write a script and create their own news broadcast!
Curated OER
Expressive Papier-Mache Masks
Middle schoolers create papier-mache masks showing different human emotions. In this mask lesson, students choose what facial expression they want and sketch out their mask and background. They form the "face" in clay and then...
TCI
Dreams Progress
Has society progressed to the dream Martin Luther King Jr. expressed in his famous address during the civil rights movement? Learners work with a partner to analyze one excerpt from King's "I Have A Dream" speech and find a current...
Learning to Give
Teaching Playwriting in Schools
The world is a stage, and so is your classroom! Hone the skills of the next generation of Tony® award winners with a set of exercises, reference pages, writing prompts, and excerpts from famous plays.
Global Oneness Project
Far From Home
A timely and provocative lesson inspires high schoolers to tackle the Syrian refugee crisis. They analyze a compelling photo essay before discussing and writing about it.
Massachusetts Department of Education
Nostalgia
To prepare for crafting their own memoir, class members examine poetry by Margaret Atwood, Billy Collins, Robert Hayden, and Claude McKay, stories by Richard Rodriquez and Willa Cather, and Barry Levinson's film Avalon. They examine...
Perkins School for the Blind
Encouraging Students Who are Blind or Visually Impaired to Express Their Feelings and Explore Imagination
Being expressive in a creative, empathetic, or imaginative way is not only fun, it builds good pre-writing and communication skills. Learners with visual impairments have a roundtable discussion session where several sentence frames...
Azar Grammar
Song Lessons: You Gotta Be
Des'ree's song "You Gotta Be" is used to model for language learners the forms that can be used to express necessity (must, have to, have got to). After examining the grammar in the song, the attention switches to a discussion of the...
Film English
Music
Some emotions are indescribable, but sometimes you have to try! After brainstorming adjectives that describe emotions, pupils watch a quick film, at first with no sound. Partners share their adjectives and come up with descriptions for...
Curated OER
Lesson: A Special Place
Everybody has a special place they like to go. I hang out on top of the fridge, for example. Upper graders analyze the painting Mountain Lake, in terms of technique, style, and imagery. They then write or draw a place that expresses...
Maine Content Literacy Project
Introduction to The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson
"The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson is a great story to share with your class, and this lesson focuses on just that story! The eighth in a fourteen-lesson series on short stories, the plan has learners study some vocabulary, read the...
Shutterfly
Shutterfly Photo Story Lesson Plan
A reading of Peggy Parish's Amelia Bedelia launches a study of idioms. Groups then select several idioms, write the meaning of the expressions, draw or select images, and use GIMP or Photoshop to create an idiom book.
Curated OER
Speed Racers
A review of decoding words is incorporated in a discussion on reading with expression in order to increase fluency. The teacher gives several book options for readers to practice smooth and inflected reading, giving a short book talk on...
National Institute for Literacy
Making Sense of Decoding and Spelling
Go over digraphs, vowel sounds, and affixes with a series of decoding and spelling lessons. Each lesson guides learners through a different reading and phonics skill, building on the lesson before, and challenging them with each step.
Southern Nevada Regional Professional Development Program
Focus: The Paideia Seminar
Compelling discussions are the result of open-ended, challenging questions. An introduction to Paideia discussions includes explicit directions about how to prepare readers and how to model the kinds of questions they should develop...
Curated OER
Lesson: Sensing a Different Way
Problem solving and creative thinking are top priority in an interesting lesson. Learners explore how they can think creatively to use four common objects in three different ways, they discuss senses and using senses differently to...
Film English
Real Beauty
Consider the theme of beauty with discussion about what makes person beautiful and the well-known short film put together by Dove skin care. Class members examine some of the images from the film and discuss the message of the...
Road to Grammar
Health
Are your English language learners feeling unwell? Provide them with the tools to express how they are feeling and to talk about health in general. Included here are discussion activities, vocabulary, listening activities, grammar...
National Endowment for the Humanities
The Preamble to the Constitution: A Close Reading Lesson
"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union..." These familiar lines begin the Preamble to the Constitution, but do learners know what they mean? A close reading exercise takes a look at the language of the...
Curated OER
Parrot in the Oven: Pair Reading
After reading and discussing chapter 10 of Victor Martinez's Parrot in the Oven: Mi Vida with a partner, individuals write about a time they had to exhibit real courage.
Lerner Publishing
Teaching Vowel Combinations
Need some fun activities to augment your lessons on vowel patterns and phonemic awareness? Peruse a series of worksheets designed to help little ones with their early reading skills.