The New York Times
Evaluating Sources in a ‘Post-Truth’ World: Ideas for Teaching and Learning about Fake News
The framers of the United States Constitution felt a free press was so essential to a democracy that they granted the press the protection it needed to hold the powerful to account in the First Amendment. Today, digital natives need to...
Curated OER
Physical Education Word of the Week
Practice physical education vocabulary in your classroom. Working with language arts teachers, learners use dictionary skills to define and explain a word dealing with a concept in physical education. They also complete a task and have...
Curated OER
Dictionary Bluff
Students practice their dictionary skills by participating in a game of words with correct and incorrect definitions. They must work in pairs to determine the incorrect definitions and uses for a word.
Curated OER
Learning About Homonyms
I don't know why but I love teaching homonym lessons. This one encourages learners to look up and write a definition for a set of 10 different homonyms. Tip: Put new knowledge to the test and have the class fix a story that contains...
Scholastic
Frindle Lesson Plan
"Who says a pen has to be called a pen? Why not call it a frindle?" Inspired by this quote from the award-winning novel written by Andrew Celements, this lesson allows children to invent their own terms for common classroom objects,...
Curated OER
My Spelling Dictionary
Develop study skills and improve spelling at the same time. Every time I teach this mnemonic device, the kids thank me. It makes memorizing more manageable, and fun. To remember how to spell difficult words, make up a sentence using the...
Curated OER
How to Explore Religious Teachings Without Prejudice
Setting goals plays a major role in becoming a self motivated learner. Students will read and discuss a story, set personal goals, and analyze a sacred prayer. This lesson includes: teacher evaluation, goal worksheet, prayers, story, and...
Curated OER
Hop Into the Op Word Family
An engaging lesson that teaches the /op/ word family is here for you. In it, learners utilize a PowerPoint and a worksheet embedded in the plan to help them better-understnad this word family. This fun lesson should be a hit with your...
Curated OER
Dictionaries
Students understand the way the dictionary is laid out as well as the purpose for why people use dictionaries. In this language arts lesson, students recognize the need for alphabetical order and are able to find words using a...
Curated OER
Compounding the Problem
Pupils sharpen their dictionary skills and their understanding of compound words in this plan. Tailor it to the grade level you teach by honing in on specific skills. For older learners, the plan suggests providing a word and having them...
Curated OER
Writing History: From Students to Scholars
An Online NewsHour article about scholarly ethics launches this study of plagiarism. Since historians are supposed to bring original ideas and perspectives to their publications, they must give credit to the ideas of others. After a...
Curated OER
Unlocking New Words: Partner Presentations
Following extensive modeling about how to apply word analysis and vocabulary skills to learn new words, partner teams create brief word presentations to teach new vocabulary to the class. Preselect words from upcoming social studies,...
Council for Economic Education
China - Where Will They Fit in the World Economy?
Teach scholars why China is so crucial to global economics through an informative resource. Activities include using databases to search for information, watching a video or listening to a podcast, and reading about China's economy as a...
Haut Gap Middle School
Root Words
Scholars demonstrate their knowledge of root words aqua and aud, and develop vocabulary skills by completing of a chart, handout, and worksheet using creative thinking skills, a dictionary, and a thesaurus.
Curated OER
Forget The Dictionary!
Accessing Web sites and playing interactive word games enliven the study of Greek, Latin and Anglo-Saxon roots and affixes. Alas, the link to resources appears broken. Take some time to find game links.
Curated OER
My Daily Routine
Foreign language learners work in pairs to translate the daily routine of celebrities or everyday people, presented in daily planner format, into English. They then illustrate and record their own daily routines in storyboard (film...
Global Oneness Project
The Importance of Indigenous Language Revitalization
Middle schoolers consider languages as representations of cultures and the importance of preserving various languages, especially the rapidly disappearing languages of indigenous peoples, in a lesson that tells the story of Marie Wilcox...
EngageNY
Carl Hiaasen’s Perspective of Florida: Part 2
Look it up. Scholars read Florida: A Paradise of Scandals Excerpt 1 and use a dictionary to look up any unfamiliar words. They then do a close read of the text and answer text-dependent questions. Learners analyze author perspective by...
EngageNY
Researching and Note-Taking: Becoming an Expert on a Colonial Trade
Fourth graders work in small groups to become experts on different colonial trades in the eighth instructional activity of this unit. Working toward the long-term goal of writing a piece of historical fiction, young scholars read...
Curated OER
Picture Dictionary
Students create picture dictionaries to encourage the development of letter-sound recognition. In this alphabet project, students cut out pictures from magazines and glue them onto tagboard, and then write the name of the picture below...
Curated OER
Nutrition Dictionary
Students look up nutrition vocabulary words in the dictionary and write a nutritious fact they learned about each of the words. In this nutrition lesson plan, students also play pictionary with the words.
Curated OER
Using "Kindness"
Students discover the benefits of kind acts by dissecting the word itself. In this vocabulary instructional activity, students utilize the letters in the word "kindness" to create other words which they record. Students figure out what...
Curated OER
Seeing Words in a New Way
What's the best resource to use when looking up words? Use Visual Thesaurus to see a word's meaning. The class accesses the interactive website and then compares and contrasts the difference between using a traditional dictionary and the...
Shmoop
ELA.CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.9-10.4
The fourth standard for reading literature in the Common Core calls for young readers to be able to determine the figurative and connotative meanings of words and phrases. Use this resource, a continuation of a series of Common Core...