Language Arts

Literary Elements

• Internalization of Vocabulary Through the Use of a Word Map - Students internalize vocabulary through the use of a concrete and sequential word map
• Flip-a-Chip: Examining Affixes and Roots to Build Vocabulary - Lesson provides hands-on practice with affixes and roots and promotes comprehension through structural analysis and vocabulary in context.
• Focusing Reader Response Through Vocabulary Analysis - Students suggest words then place collected words into at least four categories, that they then present and explain to the class.
• Introducing Each Other: Interviews, Memoirs, Photos, and Internet Research - Students read, write, speak, listen, and research
• Timelines and Texts: Motivating Students to Read Nonfiction - Students explore various historical perspectives and develop a character for their own piece of historical fiction.
• Traveling the Road to Freedom Through Research and Historical Fiction - Students gain an understanding of slavery and the Underground Railroad.
• Using a Word Journal to Create a Personal Dictionary - Students keep track of unfamiliar words they encounter while
• Writing a Flashback and Flash-Forward Story Using Movies and Texts as Models - Students create their own stories incorporating these literary devices
• Every Punctuation Mark Matters: A Mini-Lesson on Semicolons - Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" demonstrates that even the smallest punctuation mark signals a stylistic decision,
• Action Is Character: Exploring Character Traits with Adjectives - Students "become" one of the major characters in a book and describe themselves
• Be a Reading Detective: Finding Similarities and Differences in Ideas - Students identify ways in which an author relates ideas and how these ideas can be transferred into a visual representation.

 

Open- Ended Questions

• Cooking Up Descriptive Language: Designing Restaurant Menus - Students work in groups to choose a restaurant and then create their own custom menus.
• Breaking Barriers, Building Bridges: Critical Discussion of Social Issues - Students confront and discuss issues of injustice and intolerance
• Choose Your Own Adventure: A Hypertext Writing Experience - Working in small groups students will develop Choose Your Own Adventure Story Web sites.

 

Literal Comprehension

• The Holocaust: Studying Lessons of the Past - This lesson engages students in an introductory study of the Holocaust.

• Teaching Voice with Anthony Browne's Voices in the Park - Students analyze how an author creates voice and to apply that knowledge to writing.

• Tenement Life: Mapping Texts and Making Models - Students explore conditions of tenement living in the United States in the late 1800s and early 1900s

• The Big, Bad Wolf . . . Is This a Fact? - Helps to increase comprehension, vocabulary, and research skills, and boost students willingness to read

• The History Behind Song Lyrics - Students examine the song "We Didn't Start the Fire" by Billy Joel. In groups, students research the items listed in the song, looking at their historical relevance

• The Reading Performance: Understanding Fluency Through Oral Interpretation - Students gain a new appreciation for written literature intended for oral performance

• Traveling the Road to Freedom Through Research and Historical Fiction - Students read Nightjohn by Gary Paulsen and True North by Kathryn Lasky to gain an understanding of slavery

• Using a Word Journal to Create a Personal Dictionary - Students predict when specific inventions were produced. Through discussion, they consider the connections between historical events and when inventions were created.

 

Inferential Comprehension

• Teaching Voice with Anthony Browne's Voices in the Park - Students determine how an author creates voice and to apply that knowledge to writing.

• Tenement Life: Mapping Texts and Making Models - Students explore conditions of tenement living in the United States in the late 1800s and early 1900s. to construct tenement apartment models.

• An Alternative to Testing: Miss Alaineus: A Vocabulary Disaster - Turn fun and confusion into a performance that demonstrates what your students know.

• The History Behind Song Lyrics - Students research the items listed in the song, looking at their historical relevance

• The Big, Bad Wolf . . . Is This a Fact? - Students increase comprehension, vocabulary, and research skills, and willingness to read. Activities include sustained silent reading (SSR), book discussions, teacher modeling, journal responses, research, and use of multimedia software to create presentations.

• The Holocaust: Studying Lessons of the Past - This lesson engages students in an introductory study of the Holocaust.

• The Reading Performance: Understanding Fluency Through Oral Interpretation - Students and gain a new appreciation for written literature intended for oral performance.

Dialogue

• Character Clash: A Mini-Lesson on Paragraphing and Dialogue- This lesson helps students identify the structures that will clarify their text by using colored markers.

• He Said/She Said: Analyzing Gender Roles through Dialogue - This lesson provides an opportunity to analyze gender roles and stereotypes by examining dialogue in a short story or novel. By asking students to explore the gender assumptions in their readings, teachers can encourage students to question more fully the "norms" they see and often tacitly accept.

• Writing a Flashback and Flash-Forward Story Using Movies and Texts as Models- Flashbacks and flash-forwards are common devices used in literature and films. Students will not only see examples of these devices through movies and stories, they will also create their own stories incorporating these literary devices.

Play Writing

• Writing a Flashback and Flash-Forward Story Using Movies and Texts as Models

  Students create their own stories incorporating these literary devices.

 

Interpreting Text

• Using QARs to Develop Comprehension and Reflective Reading Habits

  Students use the question-answer relationship (QAR) strategy.

• Using the Check and Line Method to Enhance Reading Comprehension

  This lesson is intended to assist students in retaining valuable information and grasping difficult concepts.

• Inventing and Presenting Unit 1: Analyzing Nonfiction and Inventing Solutions

  Students design, build, and test inventions to solve problems they have identified.

• Inventing and Presenting Unit 2: Effective Speeches and Building the Invention

  Students design, build, and test inventions to solve problems they have identified. Final speeches, including graphs, brochures, PowerPoint Slides, and demonstrations, are presented

• A Directed Listening–Thinking Activity for The Tell-Tale Heart

  Students compose a written response to the story in the form of either an acrostic poem or comic strip.

• An Exploration of Text Sets: Supporting All Readers

  Students create text set collections on topics

• Heroes Around Us

  Students collaboratively define heroism and discover that heroes can be everyday people who perform brave and noble deeds.

Analyzing/Critiquing Text

• Book Report Alternative: Comic Strips and Cartoon Squares

  Students think analytically about the characters, events, and themes they've explored in ways that expand their critical thinking.

• Dynamic Duo Text Talks: Examining the Content of Internet Sites

  Students see a variety of online texts about Anne Frank and the Holocaust prior to more extensive study of these topics.

• Book Report Alternative: Creating Careers for Characters

  Students become characters in a novel they have read, find a job and write application letters and resumes for their assumed persona.

• Book Report Alternative: Summary, Symbol, and Analysis in Bookmarks

  students practice summarizing, recognizing symbols, and writing reviews—all while writing for an authentic audience.

• Book Reviews, Annotation, and Web Technology

  Integrating technology, research, and the language arts, students work collaboratively on this lesson.

• Audience, Purpose, and Language Use in Electronic Messages

  This lesson explores the language of electronic messages.

• Battling for Liberty: Tecumseh's and Patrick Henry's Language of Resistance

  Through reading and hearing the speeches of Tecumseh, students develop a new respect for the Native Americans' politically effective and poetic use of language

• Be a Reading Detective: Finding Similarities and Differences in Ideas

  Students participate in activities that allow them to identify ways in which an author relates ideas.

Speculative Writing

• Doodle Splash: Using Graphics to Discuss Literature

  Students keep a doodle journal while reading short stories by a common author.

• A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words: From Image to Detailed Narrative

  Distribute or show a picture that tells a story and then encourage students to brainstorm words and ideas about the image before writing a story that tells background on the image or extends details on what has happened.

• Creative Communication Frames: Discovering Similarities between Writing and Art

  Students explore the creative processes of writing and art as communication

• Creative Writing Through Wordless Picture Books

  Students develop their own story lines for wordless picture books

• Biography Project: Research and Class Presentation

  Students research a famous person, make a graphic organizer (a web), present main aspects of the person's life to the class.

Persuasive Writing

• Exploring Free Speech and Persuasion with Nothing But The Truth

  Students compose and present position statement and supporting evidence to the class.

• Battling for Liberty: Tecumseh's and Patrick Henry's Language of Resistance

  Reading and hearing the speeches of Tecumseh, students develop a new respect for the Native Americans' politically effective and poetic use of language.

• Child Labor: Giving Voice to the Industrial Revolution Through Monologues

  Students explore child labor conditions during the Industrial Revolution in England and the United States

• Critical Literacy: Point of View

  By the sixth grade, most students are able to identify point of view in texts by recognizing writing in the first person, second person, and third person. In this lesson, students learn to look at texts from different viewpoints. Was the "big bad wolf" really bad? Throughout the lesson, students are encouraged to view texts from different angles.

• Critical Media Literacy: Commercial Advertising

  Students investigate the influence of advertising on their daily lives. Choices of clothing, music, and other products can be attributed to what adolescents see and hear on television, radio, and other media. In this lesson, students develop a critical eye toward advertising and investigate the hidden messages that are presented.

Revising / Editing

• She Did What? Revising for Connotation

  Students act out ways that the student in the sentence might enter the room, revising the sample sentence to increase the specificity of the word and explore connotation.

• Reciprocal Revision: Making Peer Feedback Meaningful

  Students use specific strategies (i.e., predicting, summarizing, clarifying, and questioning) to more constructively offer peer feedback during the writing process.

• Peer Review: Narrative

  Student writers to find and correct their own errors, using self-editing knowledge to empower them as writers, rather than asking them to make others' corrections.

• Leading to Great Places in the Middle School Classroom

  This lesson examines leads in prominent young adult literature and asks students to try their own hand at writing leads.

Poetry

• Composing Cinquain Poems with Basic Parts of Speech

  Students learn about chinquapin and write simple chinquapin of their own

• Found Poems/Parallel Poems

  Students will write their own parallel poems from a descriptive passage from a piece of literature.

• Astronomy Poetry: Combining Poetry With the Content Areas

  Students combine science and poetry in this innovative lesson.

• Alliteration in Headline Poems

  Students create a headline poem consisting of 25 words that contain at least three examples of alliteration

• In the Poet's Shoes: Performing Poetry and Building Meaning

  Students write content-rich poems that honor our veterans.

• Honoring Our Veterans Through Poetry Prewriting

  Students gather information about the history and celebration practices associated with Veterans Day.

• Weaving the Threads: Integrating Poetry Annotation and Web Technology

  This project engages students in meaningful research using poetry as a focal point. Students identify words and phrases in a poem by a Native American and in the process, learn about Native American culture and history. Students create a Web site using the poem as a "launching" space that takes readers into various explanations of words and phrases.

• What Am I? Teaching Poetry through Riddles

  Riddles have a long history dating to antiquity. Riddle poems, which rely upon creative use of metaphor, simile, and metonymy; concrete imagery; and imaginative presentation and description of an object or concept, are an excellent vehicle for introducing students to poetry and poetry writing.

• Using the Four-Square Strategy to Define and Identify Poetic Terms

  Through online research and follow-up discussion, students define four poetic terms using a four-square graphic organizer. They then locate and record examples of each term and apply their knowledge as they explore the poem "The Eskimos Have No Word for 'War'" by Mary Oliver.