Smithsonian Institution
The Sounds of an Island: Jamaican Music for the Classroom
Introduce young explorers to the music and history of Jamaican culture through game songs and dances. As a bonus, class members get to play simple songs transcribed for the recorder.
Curated OER
Dynastic Explorations
Students complete a unit of lessons on medieval Chinese dynasties. They examine the impact the Chinese culture has had on their own lives, label maps, conduct research, read stories, create bamboo stick sentences, write poems, and make...
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Dramatizing Fables
Young scholars familiarize themselves with fables by listening to several of them. They define fables. They identify the moral of a specific fable. They identify characters, plot and sequence of events. They create a mask of a character...
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Each Peach Plum Pear
First graders listen to the story, Each Peach Pear Plum by Janet and Allen Ahlberg, then give appropriate responses to questions asked about the story. They investigate what compound words by participateing in a variety of activities.
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Digital Photography and Language Arts
First graders in groups develop a sense of story by making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. While one student makes the sandwich, the partner takes digital pictures of the five steps involved in the process. They switch roles. The...
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Technology-commected Folklife Lesson Plan: Fables
Learners discuss ways the stories were alike and different. The teacher demonstrate how to draw a Venn diagram using Microsoft Word. They label the two circles and enter the likenesses and differences on the diagram.
Alabama Learning Exchange
Looks Like Snow
Students listen to the teacher read the book, The Jacket I Wear in the Snow, and create vocabulary and graphic cards from the story.
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Book Title: Counting Crocodiles by Judy Sierra
Students explore number sequence in a variety of activities. In this number practice lesson, students play a game of finger flash and read the book Counting Crocodiles. Students discuss the counting elements in the book and chart the...
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Through the Forest and Home Again: Maps Help Us Find Our Ways
Students read Little Red Riding Hood, focusing on her path home to Grandma's house. In this language arts and geography instructional activity, students perform a reader's theater, re-creating the walk home and possible routes that could...
Alabama Learning Exchange
Leo Lionni’s Little Blue and Little Yellow
Students use the Internet to research the author Leo Lionni, then rewrite and illustrate one of his stories.
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Phonics lesson for -ar
First graders identify words associated with the -ar sound. They read sentences and compose a story that include words with the -ar sound. The assessment portion of lesson plan involves students in spelling words with the
-ar pattern.
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Phonics lesson for "sh"
First graders identify words with the "sh" pattern. They participate in phonemic awareness, decoding, blending, spelling patterns, and dictation exercises. As the assessment portion of the lesson, they may write a story using words...
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Our Native Americans
Students complete a unit of lessons on Native Americans. They label maps, list resources the Native Americans used in their daily lives, create an original short story, define key vocabulary, and develop a model of something that...
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Number Stories
Pupils write and solve various number stories. They solve number stories using one, two and three digit numbers. Students practice writing sentences using the following 6+1 traits, ideas and content, organization, word choice and...
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The Archer and The Sun
First graders explore Chinese folktales. In this Chinese folktale lesson ,students read Chinese folktales, locate China on a map, and color the Chinese flag. Students are given sentence strips to hold and must arrange themselves in the...
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Oh! The Stories Behind Nursery Rhymes
Students investigate the games that children used to play to nursery rhymes. They explore the role of illustrators and illustrate their own book of rhymes in this unit.
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Making Movie Storyboards
Students explore the importance of images in telling a story in film, analyze movie clips and identify some visual cues that help them explain the story; students work collaboratively to storyboard a passage from a book and present them...
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Who's Inside the Mitten?
Pupils read "The Mitten", by Jan Brett. They discuss vocabulary presented in the story and sequence significant plot events. They make masks to represent several of the characters and act out the story.
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Harriet The Spy
Fourth graders investigate the style of diary writing as its own genre of literature. They read Harriet The Spy in order to have a text for this literature study. Students use the skill of prediction to preview the story, and then...
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Say It with Meaning: Applying Sayings and Phrases
Students complete a unit of lessons on well known sayings and phrases. They create a journal, write paragraphs, sequence events, and analyze key vocabulary for various sayings and phrases throughout the school year.
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Taking Charge of our Earth and its Resources
Students identify natural resources, discuss conservation and protection of them, and identify how pollution is harmful to the environment. Seven lessons on one page.
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Comic and Film Strip Writing
Students write a funny story and illustrate it in a comic strip. In this comic strip lesson, students study comic strips and determine the plot of each story. Students then write a short story and illustrate it using a comic strip...
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Establishing a Point of View in Narratives
Fourth graders investigate the concept and take the opportunity to both identify and to construct point of view in narratives. Additionally, 4th graders practice identifying and sequencing main events.
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Plot Structure
Ninth graders review the parts of a plot sequence for a short story. They think of a famous Disney movie and plot the events of the movie in the correct plot sequence. They do the same for a comic strip, labeling the exposition, rising...