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Narrative Writing Lesson
Sixth graders experience the stages of process writing, work cooperatively, to critique and to incorporate software tools to enhance writing and problem solving skills.
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Picturing America: Images and Words of Hope from Romare Bearden and Langston Hughes
A carefully crafted three-day instructional activity integrates poetry and visual art. By analyzing and comparing Langston Hughes' poem "Mother and Son" and Romare Bearden's collage "The Dove," readers explore the theme of hope. The...
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Drafting the Declaration of Independence
Young scholars working in small groups to compare and contrast the rough draft of the Declaration of Independence written by Thomas Jefferson with the final version. They list the differences and decide on why the changes were made.
Learning to Give
Teaching Playwriting in Schools
The world is a stage, and so is your classroom! Hone the skills of the next generation of Tony® award winners with a set of exercises, reference pages, writing prompts, and excerpts from famous plays.
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Strong Descriptive Writing: James and the Giant Peach
Support your writers! Clear procedures and appropriate support make this a superb resource for elementary writing instruction. Ready your class to compose original descriptive paragraphs inspired by the episode in Roald Dahl's James and...
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Personal Narrative Paragraphs: Class Quilt
Begin this activity by asking third graders to bring from home pieces of cloth that represent something important to them. (Have extras for students who need them.) They reflect on important events in their lives, compose narrative...
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All About Me Books
Young authors write books about themselves using one of the identified types of literature and the writing process. They identify the common characteristics among the books in each group, edit, and gift their books to a younger student.
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Using Each Trait to Improve Student Writing
High schoolers examine examples of the qualities of good writing skills and discuss how each of the traits add to the process of good writing. A variety of excerpts from literature provide samples for the exploration.
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Hands on Essays
Third graders relate the concept of individuality of geometric shapes to the individuality of topic sentences. They write and revise a persuasive argument essay using an established rubric.
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Creating Children's Books
High schoolers collaborate to create a children's book. In this visual arts lesson, student study the components and procedures that go into making a children's book including the shape, size. layout, biographical information about the...
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The Learning Network: Re-envisioning Classic Stories
Readers reflect on enjoyable stories they know, brainstorm criteria that make a story "good," analyze a New York Times article about innovative children's performances, re-envision classics on their own, and peer edit drafts. Use this as...
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Intermediate Question Response- "Your Favorite Movie"
In this intermediate question response learning exercise, students write a response telling what their favorite movie is and why. They read an exemplary answer, write a rough draft, and a final draft of their answer.
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Final Reports
Learners write reports, including a summary of their research findings and their historical journal entries, to be shared with friends and families, and publish their reports.
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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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Language Arts: Stick Puppet Show
Students create short stories and make stick puppets to act it out. After editing their stories, they glue used CDs or DVDs to popsicle sticks and decorate them as the story characters. Finally, students present their puppet shows to...
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The Water Cycle: Revising the Drafts
Learners explore states of matter by concentrating on the ways in which water moves between its solid, liquid, and gaseous states in a variety of Earth environments familiar to the students. Learners represent these movements in dance.
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Writing
Students discover the process of writing,. including the different steps to be taken in accomplishing the writing process to come up with the final published pieces.
Teaching Tolerance
Buddy Share
Here's a project that gives academics the chance to share their opinions on social justice with storytelling, creative writing, or art. Scholars choose what they want to create and are assigned buddies to support their efforts. To...
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Picture It-Robot Writing!
Fifth graders use their listening skills to sketch draft pictures of robots described in paragraphs read by their teacher. They transfer their robot sketches to word processing documents using software drawing tools.
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Art: Weaving Based on Draft Patterns
Fourth graders observe the process of drafting a pattern on graph paper. After creating their own patterns, they create their own weavings, and explain its title to the class.
Teacher Printables
My Report Pack for... Famous Artists
Famous artists are fascinating, and learners will explore one of their choice using this report pack. Working their way through this template, they write three questions about the artist they are researching, check off types of reference...
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Creating Plays from Children's Stories
Students explain how individual elements (e.g., plot, theme, character, conflict, etc.) comprise the structure of a play. They write an original one-act play with developed characters, specific setting, conflict, and resolution.
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Image to Word
Students research art and write about how a certain art piece relates to their own life. In this art lesson plan, students go to Brooks museum and discuss the art they find there.
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I Have a Dream Podcasts
Students write dream speeches and record them as Mp3's. In this speech lesson, students watch Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, "I Have Dream Speech." They use the writing process to develop a dream speech which they rehearse. They record their...