Curated OER
Comparing Themes Across Texts
Read various texts to compare the themes across each text. Learners write a journal entry describing the most beautiful scenery they've seen and use a map of the United States to locate the Sequoia National Park and Muir Woods. They then...
Curated OER
Nonfiction
As scholars begin using informational texts, it's important they understand their uses and features. This visual worksheet has readers match three text titles to corresponding pictures. Next, they examine a book cover with the...
Curated OER
Seeing the Image in Imagery: A Lesson Plan Using Film
In our increasingly visual society, it is often difficult for some readers to create a mental picture of a picture created only with words. An image-rich text like F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby can therefore, present a real...
Curated OER
Marvelous Mother's Day Cards
Young scholars create a Mother's Day Card using Kid Pix Deluxe 3. They choose and apply a background using Background button. Students add stamps to the picture using the Stamp button. They add text including a message and their name and...
Curated OER
Papyrus to PDA
What a great project. Graphic arts learners consider the social, political, and economic impact made by a chosen invention. They build an argument to substantiate their reasons for choosing said invention. They create an oral...
Curated OER
Reading Strategies
Good readers have internalized a system of strategies to understand text. While most reading programs explicitly teach these strategies, this presentation could be used as a discussion starter to help students understand such things as...
Perkins School for the Blind
Timeline for Anne
It is key to the learning process to make everything a child with visual impairments does as tactile as possible. After reading Anne of Green Gables, the class discusses her life events in order to make a tactile time line. They choose...
Curated OER
A Hidden Beauty
Expose the beautiful mystery of bulbs as young botanists learn all about these fascinating plants. They glean information from a short text before observing actual bulbs (consider an onion), and comparing their findings with predictions....
Pottsgrove School District
Tall Tales
Young readers compare and contrast digital and print versions of tall tale text. The resource includes a character analysis in which pupils compare and contrast traits, and make inferences about what the characters do and say. They...
EngageNY
Close Reading: “Dog Sleds” and “Kayak”
Visualize it! Scholars read pages 12–15 of The Inuit Thought of It and create a visual gist of the text. They then do a close read of the text and create a natural environment anchor chart before answering text-dependent questions.
Alabama Department of Archives and History
How Two Alabamians Remembered Slavery Years Later
Designed to help readers recognize the point of view of the author of a primary source documents and analyze how that point of view influences the reliability of a text, young historians examine two personal letters, one written by...
Reed Novel Studies
The Great Gatsby: Novel Study
Some people believe that no matter how hard a man works, the American dream will always remain out of reach. A study guide for The Great Gatsby explores the themes, such as the illusory American dream, and elements of F. Scott...
EngageNY
Close Reading: Excerpt 2 of “The Digital Revolution and the Adolescent Brain Evolution”
Help scholars comprehend a challenging text. Using the resource, pupils read excerpts from an article about the digital revolution and adolescent brain development. As they read, they answer text-dependent questions and complete a close...
Teaching Tolerance
You Are the Product
What does it mean for a product or service to go viral? Scholars explore the topic by reading an article about the economics of social media. After reading, they complete a 3-2-1 data chart with information they learned from the text and...
Curated OER
Idea-Noun Definition: Source Searching
A great idea for showing language arts pupils the universality of themes, even in the real world! Have class members choose an idea-noun (peace, justice, war, love, etc.) at the beginning of the year or semester. They complete weekly...
Curated OER
How Much Is A Million
Help young learners visualize the concept of "a million." To convey concepts of numeration and literacy, they will listen to the book How Much is a Million? by David Schwartz. They should be able to make self-to-text connections....
Polk Bros Foundation
I Can Comprehend a Paragraph, then a Page/Section in a Text
Help your class tackle chunks of text with a simple graphic organizer. Pupils read three paragraphs and, as they read, draw pictures in the provided boxes that demonstrate what each paragraph says. There are three boxes on the page and...
Film Foundation
The Day The Earth Stood Still: The Filmmaking Process
How are films made? As part of their study of film, middle schoolers investigate the pre-production, production, and post-production process and consider the role of the director, the screenwriter, production designer, cinematographer,...
Film Foundation
The Day The Earth Stood Still: Film Language And Elements Of Style
In this, the third in a series of four resources that use Robert Wise's 1951 version of The Day The Earth Stood Still as the core text, young film makers examine the language of film including shot composition, camera angle, lighting,...
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
One Land, Many Trails: English Language Development Lessons (Theme 5)
English is not the only subject that requires its own set of vocabulary words—geography does too! A series of language development lessons designed to be used with Theme 5: One Land, Many Trails helps introduce readers to key vocabulary...
Curated OER
Let's Make Lemonade
Students respond to visual text. For this visual text lesson, students respond to the text, If God Gives You Lemons by making a poster advertising a lemonade sale. They listen to the story before decorating the posters with geometric...
Curated OER
Visual Literacy
Students focus on visual literacy in this lesson which can be incorporated to any previous lesson. Using images, they identify the visual elements and design in them and examining the various patterns present. In groups, they discover...
Curated OER
Visualizing: Hill Fire
Students use visualization while reading Hill of Fire. In this language arts lesson, students read the story and draw a picture of what they see while listening to the story. Students use manipulatives to create the figures described.
Curated OER
Visual Messages: Creating a Photomontage
Learners create a photomontage. In this instructional activity on photography as a means of conveying emotion, students use images gathered from the Internet to create a photomontage comparing how water is used in Africa and the U.S.