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Storytelling and Drawing
Students orally retell the Yosemite Miwok legends and design accompanying artistic depictions. They discover the various storytelling elements, such as plot and theme.
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Author Study
Students examine and identify the characteristics of the different genres of literature. After being read and reading various stories, they identify how different books by the same author carry the same story elements. They discuss how...
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PERSONIFICATOIN
In this personification activity, learners first read a short description about personification. Students are then asked to underline words that represent a quality of a person. Finally, learners look at words such as 'frog' and try to...
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Alliteration
In this figurative language worksheet, students read about alliteration. Students then respond to 25 questions that require them to identify and write their examples of alliteration.
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Similes
In this similes worksheet, students discover what similes are as they read a description and then create 11 similes of their own.
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Metaphors
In this figurative language worksheet, learners discover what metaphors are as they read a description and then identify the meanings of the metaphors in 7 sentences.
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English Exercises: Similes
In this English exercises: similes worksheet, 6th graders read the explanation and examples of similes, then interactively fill in 15 sentences using similes, with immediate online feedback.
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Making Similes
In this simile learning exercise, students read about similes, then use adjectives given in a word bank to create similes and fill in blanks in sentences with adjectives.
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Classic Short Stories by Kate Chopin
Students read two classic short stories by Kate Chopin and write a comparison of the stories. For this short story comparison lesson, students read 'Desiree's Baby' and 'The Story of an Hour' and analyze the foreshadowing and irony....
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Personification
Second graders recognize personification in texts. In this personification lesson, 2nd graders discuss figurative language and how characters can be given human-like qualities. Students read a story and write down examples they...
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Gift of the Magi LP2
Ninth graders read the story, "The Gift of the Magi" and identify examples of allusion and situational irony. They define and give examples of situational irony. Students plot sequence, structure, define allusion and give examples.
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Using Imagery
Show, don't tell! Pairs work together to change a list of telling sentences into showing sentences using picture words that create vivid pictures in the readers’ minds.
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Say Hi to Haibun Fun
What is a haibun? With this interesting lesson, writers will experience the Japanese writing form haibun, identify elements important to Japanese writing styles, analyze a haibun, and compose their own. Different from the typical journal...
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Rural Life During the Great Depression: A Year Down Yonder
“Anyone who thinks small towns are friendlier than big cities lives in a big city.” Mary Alice, the fifteen-year-old narrator of A Year Down Yonder, is forced to leave Chicago and spend a year with her Grandma Dowdel in a small rural...
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Author Study
Students focus their attention on the study of one author's works - not just one book, but a variety of works written by the same author - to discover what themes and/or other commonalities might run throughout the body of one person's...
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Carl Sandburg's "Chicago": Bringing a Great City Alive
Carl Sandburg composed poetry that conveyed a time and place in American Literature and history. Learners identify the literary techniques he uses to describe the historical and cultural context of living in Chicago. They define the...
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Inherit the Wind
Students explore the theory of evolution and read the play Inherit The Wind and a series of articles and essays about the famous Scopes trial that centered around the right to teach evolution. They incorporate technology as they research...
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The Final Word
Although this lesson is based on “Final Word,” Craig Wilson’s USA Today column, the strategies could be adapted to any local columnist. After reading three articles independently, groups share observations about content and style used by...
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M & M Madness
M&M's are always a great manipulative to use when teaching math. For this graphing lesson plan, learners predict how many of each color of M & M's there are. They count up each color and plug the data into a graph using the...
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ELA.CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.9-10.9
As the saying goes: there are no new stories. Standard 9 for reading literature in the Common Core addresses this fact and requires that students be able to analyze how authors use the themes, stories, and characters of earlier works....
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Louisiana's Tragic Hero - "Evangeline"
"Ye who believe...List to a Tale of Love in Acadie." Longfellow's epic poem, "Evangeline," launches a study of tragic heroines, epic poetry, the expulsion of the Acadians from Canada, and their subsequent migration to Louisiana. The...
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Writing Women: The Yellow Wallpaper
Students examine the historical, social, cultural and economic context of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's story, The Yellow Wallpaper. Students determine the place of the middle class woman and her role in society.
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ELA.CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.9-10.3
Teach your class the basics of narrative writing! The resource first describes the Common Core standard for narrative writing in-depth, and then moves into how to apply the standard. Show your class the example essay and quiz them...
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"O Captain! My Captain!"
Who was Walt Whitman, and what link does he have to president Abraham Lincoln? After Lincoln's assassination, Whitman wrote "O Captain! My Captain!" This poem and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" are the focus of...