Teaching Tolerance
Film Festival
Everybody's a critic—even your pupils! Using the included resources as a guide, screen films related to social justice and ask film enthusiasts to critique them. Publish the reviews for your school community or develop a film festival...
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Identifying Setting: Expository Writing
Your class can take turns describing a well know location or setting without giving its name, and the rest of the class can try to identify the location, based on the details given. They chart the elements that helped in the...
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"Knot" the Whole Truth: Writing a Modern-Day Story with a Tall Tale's Voice
Beyond Paul Bunyan and his blue ox, tall tales can be a great way to teach young writers about word choice and voice in their writing. Using Jerry Spinelli's Maniac Magee and the Six-Trait Writing process, they begin to write their own...
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2002: The Year In Review
Young scholars research and create a book highlighting significant events and trends throughout the world in the year 2002. Then, through creative writing, they respond to the events or trends themselves and how they affected our world.
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All Mixed Up
Students explore the emergence of bootlegs, also known as 'mash-ups' (the combination of two songs into one), on the Internet. By researching the musical origins of songs and creating and performing their own bootlegs, students gain a...
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The New Fant-"Asia": Contrasting Animated and Live-Action Filmmaking
Learners consider different stories and story-telling techniques of animated and live-action filmmaking, write proposals for animated films, and storyboard individual scenes.
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"Twilight" Music Provides Link Between Past And Present
Music appreciation lessons can use modern phenomena like "Twilight" to motivate students.
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Joltin' Joe Has Left and Gone Away
Students assess admirable qualities in entertainers. They discuss Joe DiMaggio's obituary, focusing on his accomplishments and place in American society. They research and create their own descriptive biographies of athletes and...
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Recalling History by Pulling Strings
Students investigate the role and nature of story-telling as it preserves history and culture and discuss how puppetry serves as an effective method of presentation. They create basic outlines for puppet shows that relay important...
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Pioneering Children on the Move
Students inquire about life for pioneer children. In this pioneer period lesson, students analyze photographs of children, make information foldables, and create a covered wagon that was typical of the ones of the past. Students will...
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Fan(tom) of the Opera
Students explore the ways in which the worlds of popular music and opera can work together to complement the other. They work in small groups to analyze plot, characters, setting and themes of a popular opera using a summary of that...
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Books on Trial
Sixth graders persuade classmates that their favorite book is the best book ever written. In this persuasive writing lesson, 6th graders create a written argument as to why their favorite book is the best. Students present their argument...
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Tradition through storytelling and music
Students discover how storytelling can shape a person's tradition.Students examine different methods of storytelling such as music, biographies, and African folktales. They then demonstrate their knowledge of storytelling by writing...
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Narrating in Simple Past with Video
Students practice in constructing simple past tense forms and checking for subject verb agreement.
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Creative Writing Lesson Plan
Students practice recognizing the elements needed to produce a piece of creative writing and become aware of those elements in their own original pieces of writings. In groups, they creatively write a new story utilizing all the major...
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Gettysburg: The Civil War's Costliest Battle
Students research the Civil War and the Battle of Gettysburg. In this Gettysburg lesson, students analyze journals and letters written by the Gettysburg soldiers. Students define Civil War soldier vocabulary words. Students compare and...
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Screening the Silver Screen
Learners write New York Times Movie Guide Reviews using descriptive and persuasive language.
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Students Information And Interest Survey
In this personal information instructional activity, students fill out this form to give details about their personal history, prior experiences and preferences. This could be used for information gathering or as an icebreaker activity.
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What About Us? Women in the Civil War
Students research the role of women in the Civil War. In this Civil War unit, students research the role women played during the war. This unit includes eight different activities including vocabulary, writing prompts and a literature...
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Creating Found Poetry From Picture Books
Students use picture books to identify poetic elements and word choice. They create a "found poem".
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Exploring Space Fiction
Students visit web sites with information on space fiction and collect information for their stories.
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Conflict
Middle schoolers outline the action in their narrative writing assignments by brainstorming about conflict. In this conflict analysis lesson, students define conflict and discuss the different types of conflict. Middle schoolers...
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The Other Tall Tales
Students research many different tall tales. They retell the tale in their own words and create an orginal tale of their own. They share their tall with the class along with illustrations.
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A Courtly Love Poem
Learners engage in a writing assignment to produce a thirteenth century Italian Courtly Poem. They imitate the literary patterns of writing to produce a unique poem using a model for example. Students review the basic terminology for...