Dream of a Nation
Creating Awareness through Action Oriented Writing and Research
Middle schoolers aren't too young to feel strongly about politics, social issues, consumer rights, or environmental problems. Demonstrate the first steps toward social change with a project about action-oriented writing. Eighth graders...
Concordia University Chicago
Paris Street; Rainy Day by Gustave Caillebotte
Discuss the balance, color, emotion, and context of the painting Paris Street; Rainy Day by Caillebotte. After a deep discussion, let creativity run free in your class as learners create a dimensional piece that reflects a life change...
Curated OER
Identify Intended Media Messages
How does media convey different messages? Use this lesson to explore media by identifying and analyzing selected images. Middle schoolers analyze a poster and discuss the intended meaning of the imagery and how it makes them feel. They...
Curated OER
Disability in the Media Lesson Plan: Braille
Students determine the workings of the Braille alphabet and how people with visual impairments learn how to use it. In this Braille lesson, students study the associated vocabulary, read about Helen Keller, and complete associated...
Curated OER
After Reading: "Plot the Plot" Activity in the Library Media Class
"Plot the plot" of "The Adventures of the Speckled Band" with your young readers. Take a few days to read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's short story as a class or in pairs, having learners write down what they consider to be the most important...
Curated OER
The View From Here
Study the beauty of the landscape around you with an innovative art instructional activity. After discussing the foreground, background, and middle ground of landscape art, kids work on making their own piece of landscape art. The...
Federal Trade Commission
A Smarter Consumer
How can understanding advertisements make people better consumers? With the fourth and final instructional activity from the Admongo series on advertising, scholars reflect on some of the questions they may ask about an ad before making...
Curated OER
Telling Stories in Art: Symbols of a Life
Through a series of activities, learners are exposed to how artists use symbolic imagery to create the narrative of a subject’s life. They study The Birth of Alexander and some manuscripts kept at J. Paul Getty Museum. They then draft...
Curated OER
Language Arts: Scavenger Word Hunt
Participate in a scavenger hunt to find objects beginning with a particular letter sound and take digital photos of them with your scholars. Using software, they find word pictures beginning with particular letters and locate picture...
Curated OER
Descriptive Writing: Using Art to Inspire description
Write with the senses! Try using art to inspire writers to consider all of the senses. Here, the class is divided in half. Each group looks at one of two images, imagines the senses that would be engaged, and records answers to five...
Curated OER
Connect the Rhymes
Pre-readers benefit from visual context clues like the ones in this rhyme instructional activity. There are two sets of objects here, and scholars connect objects on the left with their rhyming counterparts on the right. Each word has...
Curated OER
Find the Rhyme
Find the rhyming word. All of these rhyming, single-syllable words have the short i sound, but learners have to determine which ones they are. There are four starting objects each heading a row of three objects. They examine the three,...
Curated OER
Public Arts Programs
Students choose a project from one of the public art programs and work on it as a collaborative project. The goal is to encourage students to research art programs in their city, and communicate with students from another city.
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonics: Varient Correspondances, Silent "e" Changes
Engage early readers in a silent e activity to help them understand the changes the letter can make to a simple word. With the provided cards, learners read and write each word as it appears without the silent e. Then they read and write...
English Enhanced Scope and Sequence
Media Literacy Applied
After investigating various forms of print, oral, and electronic media as sources of information, class members research a historical figure and produce a résumé for this person. While templates are provided for an initial sorting...
Ontario
Lesson Plan for Media Literacy
Fourth graders analyze posters that communicate an "active living" message, otherwise known as a public service announcement. Children identify techniques that are used in creating media texts including topic, purpose, and...
Star Wars in the Classroom
"Shakespeare and Star Wars": Lesson Plan Day 12
Class members compare the final 30 minutes of Lucas's Star Wars: A New Hope with Act V of Doescher's play, William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope and consider how the choice of media influences viewers' impression of the...
Curated OER
1890's Vienna: Creative Activity
The Ringstrasse is one of the most famous places to visit in Vienna. It is a circular street frequented in the 1890's by many historic figures. After a study of Brahms, your class can complete this fun and creative activity. They color,...
Curated OER
Lesson Plan: Before and After a Moment in Time
Think about a moment, frozen in time. Now take a critical look at the painting, Better, Homes, Better Gardens. This painting works to provide learners the opportunity to analyze art, critique artist's choices, and write a story inspired...
Little Bit Studio
Bugs and Buttons 2
Playing with bugs and buttons has never been so much fun! Offering a variety of different activities, this is a great resource for developing basic skills in preschool and kindergarten-aged children.
Curated OER
Discovering Art: The Shape of Art
Young scholars visit a museum and examine works of art for use of shape. They use tracings to experiment with drawing different types of shapes and write about a favorite work of art.
Curated OER
What Does Art Sound Like?
Help your charges investigate visual art by identifying sounds that are associated with the images. They view art galleries online and discuss which sounds would be present if the image was a real life situation. Additionally, they...
Shmoop
ELA.CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.9-10.5
High schoolers know how to use technology, but they often need more training on how to use it effectively for educational or professional purposes. Try out the activities described here to get your pupils thinking about interesting ways...
Shmoop
ELA.CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.11-12.4
Determining the meaning of a word based on context clues or marking how the meaning of a term evolves in the course of a document can be a challenge in more complex text. Give your pupils an opportunity to practice this skill with a...