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Bring Literature Circles Into Your Classroom
Tips and strategies for adding literature circles to your language arts curriculum.
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Creating Characters
Students examine the methods of effective characterization. In this writing skills lesson, students discuss how emotions, dialogue, actions, and physical descriptions build believable characters. Students then use the methods of...
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Shaping the View: Symmetry and Balance
High schoolers examine how artists structure their compositions to convey a sense of symmetry and balance. They analyze various paintings, identify objects and figures in the paintings, conduct Internet research, and evaluate paintings.
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Telling A Story
Students discover that every story has a start, middle and end. In this literature lesson, the teacher models using a picture to show the parts of the story. Students each take a picture and tell a story using start, middle and end.
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Hispanic Arts: Visual Arts, Dance and Music
Students observe global cultures by listening to music and watching videos. In this Latin American dance instructional activity, students define merengue, salsa and other dances from the Hispanic culture while listening to Latin rhythm...
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Egyptian Symbols: What story do they tell?
Students create a stele to represent what symbols are the most important to them. In this symbols lesson plan, students learn about Egyptian symbols, and then put their own important symbols into model magic clay according to their size...
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Woodwind Instruments and Pitch
Students explore musical pitch. In this cross curriculum musical instruments and "sound" physics lesson, students identify and describe common traits of woodwind instruments. Students research "pitch" and what causes pitch fluctuation by...
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Plot Mobiles
Learners read folktales and identify the plot of the story by making a mobile. In this inventive and colorful lesson, students listen to a variety of famous folktales, and practice identifying the plot. Then, they work together to create...
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Kente Straw Weavings
Fourth graders explore world culture by creating an arts and crafts project in class. In this weaving lesson, 4th graders identify the Kente culture and their uses for straw and other natural elements in their communities. Students...
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Solo Dance Composition
High schoolers conclude the semester with an individual movement study utilizing basic elements of dance and choreography previously covered in class. They will choose from three choreographic prompts presented a few days before giving...
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Animation
Studnets comprehend the elements of value, perspective and color schemes. They comprehend the principles of contrast, emphasis and unity, and the expressive qualities of thematic development and sequence. Students are asked about their...
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Line and Design
All students are interested in graphic design. This activity taps into this interest to have students learn about graphic elements.
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The Influence of James Nachtwey on the Field of Photojournalism
Young scholars explore the work of James Nachtwey. In this photojournalism lesson, students discover the elements of photojournalism as they examine photographs from James Nachtwey regarding Afghanistan, AIDS, Deeds of War, Romania,...
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The Princess and the Pea
Students participate in various shared reading and writing activities related to the classic fairytale "The Princess and the Pea." They identify the story elements, write an opening sentence for the beginning of the story, and discuss...
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Enjoying Puerto Rican Artistts
Students examine artwork done by artists from Puerto Rico. As a class, they discuss each piece of work based on the elements used. They use the internet to research the lives of the artists and develop their own opinions on the art...
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Lesson Plan 1: Introducing NaNo and Novels
Did you know that November is Novel Writing Month? In the first of a series of lessons, class members are introduced to the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) project.
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Storytelling and Drawing
Learners orally retell the Yosemite Miwok legends and design accompanying artistic depictions. They discover the various storytelling elements, such as plot and theme.
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Back to School: Style Analysis
Jump back into expository writing and analysis at the start of a new school year! Start with a review of an authors' stylistic choices in diction, syntax, treatment of subject matter, and figurative language. Writers choose a text to...
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Weaving a Story of Cooperation: The Goat in the Rug
Weaving is an important part of Navajo culture. Read The Goat in the Rug to your fourth and fifth graders, and give them a glimpse into the process of rug making from the point of view of a goat! They will learn new vocabulary words and...
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Making a Magical Story
Fourth and fifth graders use their knowledge of developing character, dialogue, and setting to produce an original story. An excerpt from The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe is used as inspiration to get everyone's creative juices...
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Vocabulary and Concept Development
After introducing your class to root words and affixes, present them with this short review and practice opportunity. To start, they share definitions of root words and affixes with their partners. Then, after looking at some affixes and...
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Dingo!Dingo!
An engaging literary game called "Dingo," is here for your young mathematicians. Dingo is a game which is played with dice. The first team of students to remove all of the numbers on the game board are declared the winners. To remove a...
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Let Pharady Enjoy Her Childhood
A thought-provoking lesson which will provide your 5th graders with a world view. Pupils discuss children's rights here in the US and around the world, and do some comparisons. They watch a video, embedded in the plan, that shows a young...
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Geometric Abstraction
High schoolers create an abstract work of art that is made by repeating geometric shapes and lines, write concise instructions to reproduce the work of art and reproduce someone else's artwork via written instructions.