Curated OER
Author's Purpose: Research Process/Narrative Writing Techniques
Determine the author's purpose in writing a memoir. Eighth graders work in groups to elicit author's purpose in memoirs, taking care to note how subtle the message can be hidden throughout the work. This lesson plan is a good way...
Curated OER
Reading-Author's Purpose
Students review what author's purpose is by understanding that authors either persuade, inform, describe, or entertain with their story. For this language arts lesson, students bring in junk mail and in small groups discuss what the each...
Curated OER
The Purpose and Power of Persuasion
Examine the power of persuasion and have learners consider how it influences events in their own lives. After reading and analyzing informational texts to understand the author's purpose, class members take a written test and craft a...
Idaho State Department of Education
Lessons for Social Studies Educators
Point of view, purpose, and tone: three concepts readers of primary and secondary source materials must take into account when examining documents. Class members view a PowerPoint presentation and use the SOAPS strategy to identify an...
Random House
Focus On: Censorship & Banned Books
Billy Collins' "Rain" introduces the Random House 104-page magazine for educators that focuses on censorship and banned books. The resource is packed with teaching guides, articles by noted authors, and links to...
West Corporation
Making Inferences – Use Your Mind to Read!
How can you tell if someone is happy? The lesson works with elementary and middle school scholars to activate their schema and pay attention to details to make inferences in their daily lives, poetry, and other literature. Cleverly...
Curated OER
Emily Dickinson Poetry
Students identify a poem by Emily Dickinson for analysis. They apply a set of critical questions to a poem in order to interpret poem and find literary elements used by author. They organize information for a PowerPoint presentation...
ReadWriteThink
Word Recognition Strategies Using Nursery Rhymes
As a class, scholars read the poems, Humpty Dumpty, Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater, and Jack and Jill, in order to identify words with the same ending sound. Using their rhyming skills, learners brainstorm additional words...
Curated OER
Narrative Writing
Fifth graders study narrative writing. For this language arts lesson, 5th graders review how an author uses vivid verbs, imagery, and adjectives to capture reader's attention. Students explore literary devices of foreshadowing, flashback...
Curated OER
Eating Over the Rainbow
Students examine their own diets, and then redesign the USDA's Food Pyramid to reflect nutrition experts' latest advice. They read and discuss The Color of Nutrition: Fruits and Vegetables, which is an article imbedded in this plan.
Teaching Matters
Welcome to Writing Poetry
Your pupils are poets, and now they'll be able to show it with the exercises in this packet. The lessons, designed for beginner, intermediate, and experienced poets, not only feature a variety of poetic forms, but take...
Curated OER
Where I'm From: Imitative Poem
Students analyze 'Where I'm From' by George Ella Lyon. In this poetry lesson plan students examine the content and structure of the poem and mimic it to create a similar poem of their own.
Curated OER
The Purpose and Power of Persuasion
Seventh graders are introduced to and discuss the power of persuasion. After reading text, they identify the author's purpose, perspective and argument. They write their own fiction and non-fiction texts and develop a perspective after...
Curated OER
Call of The Wild
Prompt your class to interact with Jack London's Call of the Wild. By analyzing the events in the novel, middle schoolers discover how human experiences create who a person becomes. They critique and analyze the reading, focusing on...
Curated OER
Conventions - Punctuation Research
Study unusual punctuation marks in this punctuation lesson. Young grammarians work in small groups to research one of the unusual punctuation marks (semi-colon, colon, dash, comma, ellipses, or quotation marks) and discuss how the mark...
Curated OER
Using Prepositional Phrases
The class reads the book Heckedy Peg. Stopping to point out the prepositional phrases, the teacher models and guides the young scholars to deeper comprehension. Small groups collaborate to read A Sweet Smell of Roses. They thenfind the...
Curated OER
Analyzing Elements of a Memoir
Learners analyze and identify elements of memoirs. In this literature lesson plan students explore qualities to listen for while the teacher reads a memoir; they then break into groups and analyze a memoir independently.
Curated OER
Narrative Writing-10 Strategies for Engaging the Reader
Fifth graders discuss what narrative writing represents. For this language arts lesson, 5th graders review the ten strategies for engaging reader. Students listen to and read good examples of each strategyand write engaging beginnings in...
Curated OER
Comprehension-Characters/characterization
Fifth graders discuss characterization as well as to define antagonist and protagonist. In this language arts lesson, 5th graders write questions for an interview of a character in the book "The Three Little Pigs" and then answer them....
Curated OER
Organizational Structures of Nonfiction Text/Graphic Organizers
Fifth graders review the characteristics of a nonfiction text. In this language arts lesson, 5th graders understand that one can use a specific graphic organizer to help them in understanding an organizational structure. For example, in...
Curated OER
Changing Times, Changing Strategies
Learners explore the C.D.C.'s efforts to become better equipped to battle bioterrorism; they then discuss surveillance, epidemiological, and communications issues related to their program.
Curated OER
Writing a Book Review - Non-Fiction
Fifth graders write a book review for a nonfiction book. In this response to literature lesson, 5th graders read a nonfiction book and write a review that gets others interested in reading the book without giving too much away. The...
Georgia Department of Education
Creating Suspense
Fifth graders practice creating suspense in writing. In this narrative lesson, 5th graders read stories that create suspense through the use of cliff- hangers. They use cliff-hangers in their own writing.
Curated OER
Summarizing
Fifth graders write summaries. In this summarizing lesson students decide which events of a chapter in a book are important to summarizing. Students also create a title for the chapter based upon the contents of the chapter. Students...