Shmoop
ELA.CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.9-10.1
If you need an introduction to skill W.9-10.1 for writing, then you’re off to a good start here. Included is a funny script that introduces what the students need to know to conquer the skill. It also provides an introduction activity...
Curated OER
Media Awareness: the Basics of Advertising
Students explore marketing techniques. In this media awareness lesson, students watch instructor-selected advertising and identify the marketing techniques used in each of them. Students then create advertisements for products.
Curated OER
The Art of Violence
Violence and human suffering, as represented in art and film, are the focus of an investigation of the power of visual images and the moral implications of such representations. Class members examine “Guernica,” Pablo Picasso’s massive...
Curated OER
Lesson: Paul Chan: Alternumeric Fonts
Learning to analyze language, symbols, and codes is part of becoming a deep and critical thinker. Young analysts consider their ability to see hidden messages as they analyze the work of Paul Chan. There are two fully developed...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Medial Phoneme Find
Help kids isolate medial sounds using this listening activity. They use a visual graphic organizer (included) to match medial phonemes to corresponding pictures. As they listen to each medial sound, they mark the picture with a number.
Curated OER
In Daddy’s Arms I Am Tall Teacher’s Guide
Students read the book I Am Tall and complete several reading response activities relating to the poems in the book. In this reading response lesson, students focus on the subject of fathers and make speculations about what the poems in...
Federal Trade Commission
Ad Targeting and Techniques
What techniques do advertisers use to reach a target audience? Pupils discover the answer with the second of four Admongo lesson plans. Scholars learn about the most common strategies advertisers use to convince people to buy something....
Federal Trade Commission
Ad Awareness
Movie theaters, shopping malls, television, the Internet ... no matter where people go, they are inundated with advertisements. Scholars discuss the topic of ad awareness using the first of four Admongo lessons about advertising. Pupils...
Curated OER
Activating Students
Students view and analyze one example of student activism in the 1960's and then apply their learning to their own situations. They work cooperatively to develop and implement their own "activist" or community service learning plan.
Curated OER
Thrilling Information: Music and Reading
Here’s a cross-curricular program music activity that uses Peer Gynt to engage class members. Groups take one section of “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” choreograph their section of the tune to represent the story as they imagine it,...
Literacy Design Collaborative
A Pale Blue Dot: That's Here. That's Home. That's Us.
21st-century learners live in such a visual world that many are unused to letting their minds imagine the picture that words create. An excerpt from Carl Sagan's lecture, "The Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space,"...
Curated OER
Introduce Last Sound Segmenting (Mico Version)
What is Mico trying to say? Use a puppet to make this final-phoneme activity more engaging for kindergartners. Using three picture cards at a time (included), they listen to him say a final sound. To which of the three images is he...
August House
The Pig Who Went Home on Sunday
Turn your classroom into a pig sty with a instructional activity based on the Appalachian folktale The Pig Who Went Home on Sunday. Similar to the story of The Three Little Pigs, the folktale tells a story of four pigs who leave home—and...
NPR
Can You Beat Cognitive Bias?
In a time of fake news, media manipulation, and Internet trolls, a resource equips learners with the tools they need to recognize and combat resources that are designed to appeal to our cognitive biases. Introduce learners to five...
Curated OER
Vocabulary
Fourth graders classify vocabulary words by category. Through matching and classification activities, 4th graders sort words pertaining to trees and forest habitats into appropriate categories. They discuss how vocabulary practice can...
Curated OER
The Function of Music
Explore concepts of audience, purpose and symbols in this lesson from Media Smarts that asks students to consider all the functions of music. Through a series of discussions and activities, your class will brainstorm possible functions...
Curated OER
Project-Based Learning and the Arts
What's so great about Project-Based learning? Read to learn how projects can help kids apply higher-order thinking skills, conduct thoughtful investigations, and make cross curricular connections. This short article includes five...
Curated OER
Maus I and II: Pictionary
Why is visual literacy so important in understanding Maus? Introduce your class to basic elements of graphic novels with a game of pictionary. A list of 13 words are included, but you could potentially add some World War II-related terms...
Online Publications
Become a Journalist
Explore the newspaper as a unique entity with a detailed and extended unit. The unit requires learners to consider the newspaper's role in democracy, think about ethics, practice writing and interviewing, and examine advertising and news...
Curated OER
Let's Talk About Painting
Discuss art and read Matthew's Dream. In this visual arts lesson, learners recognize that there are different styles of art, each with its own techniques. Use simple techniques to understand art and work at stations to complete a style...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Picture the Word
This is an excellent way to make onset and rime visual for beginning readers. They examine CVC-word picture cards that are all missing the first letter. Using plastic letters (or whatever you have), they complete each word and record it...
Perkins School for the Blind
Letter Confusion
Teaching a child with low or no vision how to read is the same as teaching a sighted child how to read — it all starts with letter recognition. This is a simple way to provide your learners with an opportunity to practice reading and...
ReadWriteThink
A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words: From Image to Detailed Narrative
A picture's worth a thousand words—and even more inspiration! A visual activity uses photographs to inspire writers. The process teaches aspects of narrative writing, such as point of view and characterization.
Curated OER
Epic Improvisation
Really? Rapping The Odyssey? Really. A discussion of the oral tradition of story telling and its links to Epic poetry sets the stage for a series of activities that encourage improvisation to integrate music into other classrooms....