Young negotiators ponder the best arguments to escape captivity after listening to Aesop's "The Labourer and the Nightingale," which tells the tale of a clever songbird who secures his own freedom. They then respond to a writing prompt about the arguments they would use to return home from a faraway land.

Concepts

active reading, aesop's fables, argumentative writing

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Additional Tags

english language arts

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Instructional Ideas

• Pick a skill such organization or sentence structure and have a mini writing workshop before assigning the activity
• Publish writers' creations on a class blog or in a school newspaper for a larger audience

Classroom Considerations

• Download the audio clip before class to avoid Internet problems

Pros

• Writing prompt within the activity is rigorous and requires a well-developed response 
• The 174-word passage with a 3.8 readability score allows time for writing practice or class discussion within the period

Cons

Common Core

W.5.1.a W.6.1.a W.7.1.a W.8.1.a