Curated OER
The Art and Science of Impressionist Color
Discover Impressionist painting as students investigate the 19th century combinations of colors characteristically used. Students experiment with their own paintings, utilizing primary and secondary colors.
Curated OER
Cause or Effect
Catch the attention of your class by holding a ball and asking your learners what will happen if you let the ball go. Now that they're thinking of possible effects, introduce them to the day's topic: cause and effect. Present sentences...
Curated OER
Digging Deep for Figurative Language (Hyperbole)
What are hyperboles? Examine the attributes of hyperboles with your high school classes. Pupils read selected poems and prose selections that feature hyperboles and discuss their functions in each work of literature. Specific poems and...
Curated OER
Genre Lesson: Poetry
Hook kids into a study on poetry elements by asking them to bring in the lyrics to their favorite song. Discuss the elements in one or two songs (preferably that demonstrate rhyme, figurative language, or a repeating phrase). Groups do...
EngageNY
Jigsaw, Part 2: Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!
Three heads are better than one. Scholars gather back in their triads for another read of their monologues. They answer text-dependent questions and review their work. Learners then present their jigsaw monologues to the rest of the...
Curated OER
Criminal or Hero
Young scholars investigate slavery in America circa the American Revolution. They will examine point- of view and perspective as they research a variety of informational resources. While this is designed to be used with the PBS video...
Curated OER
English Lesson Plans for Grade 8
Demonstrate how to engage in a polite and professional conversation with this banking and interfacing lesson. Focusing on explanatory and informaitonal texts, middle schoolers write sentences using banking and finance terminologies....
National Gallery of Canada
My Own Tree
Nature contains both symmetry and asymmetry. Have your young artists examine symmetry and asymmetry in their own surroundings. After viewing works of art, pupils find trees in their neighborhoods and determine if they...
Curated OER
To Give In or Not To Give In -- That Is The Question!
Seventh graders discover how to make the best decisions given the information at hand. In groups, they role-play different roles in scenerios to help them deal with peer pressure. To end the lesson, they discuss why it is so hard for...
Curated OER
With Your Own Two Hands: Are You Changing the World or "Waiting for the World to Change"?
Can your pupils change the world? Explore this question with Ben Harper's song "With My Own Two Hands" and John Mayer's "Waiting for the World to Change." After listening to the songs, they discuss the tools at their disposal for...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Rhyme or No Rhyme
Scholars listen to a rhyming song, clap when they hear a rhyme, and shake their heads when they don't. They then draw a pair of objects that rhyme.
Curated OER
Satire and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Does Mark Twain’s satire become sarcasm and does he cross the line of propriety in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn? As an introduction of satire, class members view an excerpt from The Daily Show and discuss Stewart's use of this...
Arkansas Government
Creative Adventures with Literature - Whoever You Are
Celebrate our similarities and differences through multiple readings of Whoever you Are by Mem Fox. Readings are accompanied by a grand discussion, charts, creative art, dramatic, and music play to reinforce the uniqueness that is...
PBS
The Power of Personal Narrative
Personal narratives are powerful things. Whether told from the first-person or third-person point of view, whether in the form of an essay, a short story, novel, or video, whether fiction or fact, they capture readers and give them...
Teaching Tolerance
Advertising on the Internet
Believe it or not, everyone plays a role in Internet advertising. Scholars explore the topic with a podcast about Internet advertising and personal identity. Next, partners plan and produce their own public service announcements to...
Bantam Books
The Tempest: Four Corners
Forgiveness can be a difficult step to take in any circumstance, but is it more difficult if the offense is more egregious? High schoolers consider the concept of forgiveness before reading William Shakespeare's The Tempest. As...
California Department of Education
Tragoidia and Catharsis: A Retelling of Classical Tragedies
What a tragedy! Scholars take a close look at Greek tragedy in the form of plays. After analyzing plays, learners think about a play that relates to their own personal anxiety and recreate or reinterpret a scene from that play.
Literacy Design Collaborative
In Pursuit of Happiness
What ideas and philosophies guided the Transcendentalist movement in America? Scholars explore the topic, reading texts by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Additionally, they write essays comparing the authors' structural...
PBS
Exploring First-Person Narrative
If you really want to know, this is a terrific lesson all about narratives, which is just a fancy way of saying telling stories. And you get to do it without being phony or anything. My favorite part is that you get to read a passage...
PBS
The Symbolism of Sneakers in Ghost
As part of a study of Jason Reynold's Ghost, readers take a close look at sneaker culture and how Reynold uses sneakers as a symbol in his award-winning young adult novel. Groups explore links to "Sneakerology 101", a Carnegie...
Curated OER
Knowledge or Instinct? Jack London's "To Build a Fire"
Students closely read " To Build a Fire," to explore the use of narrative point of view and debate the distinction between knowledge and instinct. The elements of literary naturalism and how they relate to Jack London's work is examined...
Ken Taylor
The Stones: Guilty or Not Guilty?
Young drama pupils will perform a number of expressive speaking exercises as they consider the themes of responsibility, consequences, and justice in the very modern Australian play The Stones. With a lot of role playing and...
Curated OER
Maniac Magee: Found Poem
Instruct your readers to scrounge through the pages of Maniac Magee in search for descriptive passages or words they may use to write poetry. As they look for meaningful, sensory descriptors in Jerry Spinelli's novel, readers...
Curated OER
Race and Crime in the United States: Are We Victims of Discrimination or Antiheroes?
Using methods adopted by Public Policy Analysts (PPA) class groups define a social problem, gather evidence to document the existence of the problem, identify causes, evaluate existing policies designed to deal with the problem, develop...