Virginia Department of Education
Developing an essay: Using specific nouns, strong verbs, and vivid adjectives
Feeling bored and unimpressed with word choice in your class? If so, consider this activity, which focuses on using specific and precise language. Pupils use highlighters, brainstorm independently and in small groups, and create a poster...
Curated OER
Conversation Heart Bingo
Primary learners play conversation heart bingo in order to write common phrases. They will create a bingo card with common phrases from conversation heart candy. The teacher calls out phrases and the learners cover them with conversation...
Curated OER
Grammar Lesson Plan: Making Suggestions
Focusing on let's, why don't, and shall I/we, a grammar lesson takes English learners through the process of making suggestions. The lesson comes with several activities, including scripts of conversations for kids to complete, as well...
Curated OER
Literacy Lesson: Guided Reading
Here is a wonderful instructional activity designed for students with special needs. This well-thought-out instructional activity uses Big Books, familiar stories, and has a lot of review learning built into it. The book, The Keeping...
Southern Nevada Regional Professional Development Program
A Mini lesson on Semicolons
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" serves as an exemplar for a mini-lesson on semicolons. Working alone or in small groups, class members first circle all the semicolons in the letter, and then consider how this...
Curated OER
Looking Back - An Art/English/History Interdisciplinary Unit
High schoolers research historical events of the past century to recognize that society impacts the themes within art and literature. They then interview an individual to develop a biographical narrative, a collage and finally an oral...
Curated OER
The Language of Surprise
Aspiring writers complete and discuss fill-in-the-blank cliché expressions, define cliché as a form of predictable writing, take cliché expressions and turn them into new, unpredictable ones, read poetry that illustrates writer's use of...
Curated OER
Graham's Appalachian Spring: A Study
Young scholars explore choreographic narrative. In this choreography activity, students explore the elements of Appalachian Spring as they develop a series of written responses to assignments that challenge them to investigate the...
Advocates for Human Rights
Civic Engagement and U.S. Immigration Policy
To conclude their study of immigration and human rights, class members create a civic engagement project centered on an issue of immigration and designed to influence US immigration policy. They examine examples of attempts to influence...
Curated OER
Digging Deep for Figurative Language (Hyperbole)
What are hyperboles? Examine the attributes of hyperboles with your high school classes. Pupils read selected poems and prose selections that feature hyperboles and discuss their functions in each work of literature. Specific poems and...
Curated OER
Language: Has the Cat Got Your Tongue?
Use funny tongue twisters to entice your young learners! They'll love this game where they face off against members of the other team and recite tongue twisters. Who will win this enunciation and pronunciation competition!
Azar Grammar
Song Lessons: Father and Daughter
Paul Simon's "Father and Daughter" offers language learners and native English speakers an opportunity to study adverb, adjective, and noun clauses.
Curated OER
Differentiated Language Arts
Pupils read speeches and identify the main idea as well as the literary techniques employed, paying careful attention to the persuasion and repetition elements that each speech possesses. Using a graphic organizer, they analyze,...
Curated OER
ESL Grammar Lessons
Practice makes perfect when it comes to learning grammar with this ESL resource. Offering a great way to teach about relative clauses, this lesson engages students with a series of partner, small group, and whole class speaking and...
EngageNY
Grade 9 ELA Module 3, Unit 1, Lesson 5
Ninth graders study the study of animals in an informational text lesson plan that focuses on analyzing text structure. As learners continue reading the first chapter of Temple Grandin's Animals in Translation, they form inquiries and...
CPALMS
Analyzing Vonnegut's View of the Future and His Commentary on the Present in Harrison Bergeron
Kurt Vonnegut's short story "Harrison Bergeron" engages adolescents with its theme about the dangers of complete societal equality. Learners complete a graphic organizer to track literary elements in the story, as well as an inference...
EngageNY
Grade 10 ELA Module 3: Unit 2, Lesson 12
Opposites attract. Scholars choose one of their claims from the previous lesson. They then must consider the opposite view of that claim and create a counterclaim, discussing it with classmates. To help guide the discussion, they use a...
EngageNY
Grade 10 ELA Module 4: Unit 1, Lesson 7
High school writers participate in peer review of their end-of-unit tasks. They begin by discussing their thought process in pairs and then editing their work. Finally, learners participate in a class discussion on the use of the...
EngageNY
Grade 11 ELA Module 2: Unit 1, Lesson 14
Leave the past in the past. Scholars read paragraph 12 of the chapter "Of Our Spiritual Strivings" to analyze Du Bois's development of gaining liberty and leaving the ideas of the past. Pupils then carry out a three to five-minute...
EngageNY
Launching The Module: Taking a Stand
Scholars analyze various photos to determine how the people pictured take a stand. They use a Notice/Wonder Note Catcher to help organize their thoughts. Learners then study a Taking a Stand: Frayer Model handout to learn what it means...
EngageNY
Jigsaw to Analyze Mood and Tone in To Kill a Mockingbird (Chapter 8)
We have an appointment! Scholars meet with another discussion appointment to discuss the text structure of the poem "Incident" by Countee Cullen. They use a Note Catcher to guide their thinking and compare the structure to chapter 8 of...
EngageNY
Understanding Perspective: Japanese Society’s Impact on Japanese Guards (Pages 189-197)
The focus is on written communication as class members respond to questions about the text Unbroken in their Written Conversation note catchers. They trade note catchers with a partner every two minutes and then share ideas from their...
Curated OER
On the Cutting Edge
Introduce the background of design and designers and their role in communicating their thoughts to others. In groups, you can assign participation in a writing cluster on various designers and write paragraphs to submit to magazines. To...
EngageNY
Author’s Craft: The Poetry of the Play
Feel the rhythm! Pupils begin reading Act 2, Scene 1 of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream as they continue participating in a drama circle. With discussion, they examine Shakespeare's use of rhyme, rhythm, and meter, analyzing how...