Gwinnett County Public Schools
Analysis of the Tuck Everlasting and The Birchbark House Text Exemplars
Looking to introduce some text-based questions into your ELA lessons? Practice the kinds of skills the Common Core demands with the seven text-based questions and the essay prompt provided here. Designed to be a three-day lesson, day one...
Curated OER
Wild Things
Students draw a literacy response picture demonstrating knowledge and appropriate use of computer hardware components (monitor, mouse) using KidPix and Kidspiration software with a minimum of two different pictorial details on their...
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The Seasons of the Year
Learners learn about the four seasons. They collaborate in pairs, publish a book, and share with the class. They also brainstorm and collaborate with each other providing literacy skills through listening, speaking and writing activities.
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The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Explore Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" in this literature analysis lesson. Middle schoolers read and summarize the plot of the story. They then adapt passages for a contemporary audience and analyze the...
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How Cell Phones Work
Fifth graders are introduced to the text, LITERACY LINE viewing the contents page. They review the definition of explanatory writing; discussing the features used and complete a KWL chart to identify what they already know about how a...
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Rhyme at Circle Time
Students study the importance of clean hands and practice the literacy skills of listening, matching, auditory discrimination, vocabulary, and rhyming. They illustrate their rhyme chart with drawings or photos taken doing the different...
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Journalism with Natalie Moore
Students analyze journalism in the 21st century. In this journalism lesson, students read about Natalie Moore and the changing field of journalism by completing the activities in the packet.
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"Fall"owing Changes in the Season
Pupils create a whole class A-B-"C"eason Book. Each student is responsible for creating a "letter" page relating to changes, adaptations, or other fall concepts. After hard copies of the class ABC books are created, the teachers using...
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Let's Learn About Jobs
Students evaluate the jobs that their parents do. In this literature-based social studies instructional activity, the teacher introduces the concept of work both at home and on the job and leads the children in the creation of a Venn...
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I Know An Old Lady
Have your young pupils complete a variety of activities related to the story "I Know an Old Lady." They act-out the story using puppets, visit the illustrator's website, discuss his cartoon drawings for the book, and generate a list of...
New York Public Library
What's for Lunch?: New York City Restaurant Menus
Do you remember the days when a cup of coffee cost five cents? At A.W. Dennett restaurant in 1894, you could buy a five-cent cup of coffee and as well as a five-cent slice of pie to accompany it. The menu from that year is a primary...
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Letters to Poets
Add a strong poetry instructional activity to your literature unit. Middle and high schoolers investigate their writing voices with journaling and group discussion, then choose a famous poet to study. They write letters to their chosen...
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Living With the Heat: The Ring of Fire
Students investigate the planet Earth's infamous ring of fire and the life that thrives from it. For this ocean environment lesson, students investigate hydrothermal vents and how organisms thrive off their heat. Students complete a...
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Enter Players: Constructing Character Connections in Hamlet
High schoolers research the characters of Hamlet. In this Shakespearean literature lesson, students complete a pre-reading activity designed to improve their familiarity with the characters in the story. In small groups, high schoolers...
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Communicating Feelings
In this literacy worksheet, students work in groups about the concepts of feelings and communication. They write the types of communication in the graphic organizer.
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Foreshadowing and Making Predictions
"What happens next?" Using real-life scenarios, movies, images, and other prompts, pupils practice making predictions based on inferences from clues. A SMART board activity takes them from making predictions to writing a prediction...
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We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution: The American Revolution
The contributions of African-Americans to the American Revolution are the focus of this Social Studies and language arts lesson. After reading and discussing Linda Crotta Brennan’s The Black Regiment of the American Revolution, class...
Star Wars in the Classroom
"Shakespeare and Star Wars": Lesson Plan Days 13 and 14
How important are sound effects in films? In stage plays? In radio programs? To gain an understanding of the impact of these special effects, class members watch a short video spoof of the sound in a scene from Star Wars: A New...
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Meet Kit: An American Girl
Young scholars explore economics by participating in a role-play activity. In this consumerism lesson, students identify the Great Depression, the cause of the financial collapse and the devastation it caused people their own age. Young...
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The Cow That Went Oink
Learners complete a variety of activities related to the book The Cow That Went Oink. They role-play the various animals from the story, write a letter to a farm animal in the book, identify syllables of story words, and create an...
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Spinning My Tale
Begin writing personal narratives in this writing activity. Junior high writers start by writing a journal about their favorite holiday. They read a book at their skill level and use graphic organizers to record their ideas for writing....
PBS
Copyright and Fair Use
When is using someone else's copyrighted material appropriate? Learn about copyright and fair use with a lesson from PBS.org. Scholars read through a reference sheet about authors' rights and users' rights, and then create posters for a...
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A Soldier's View of the American Civil War
Study and research the American Civil War in this explanatory writing lesson. Middle schoolers complete six activities to learn about the American Civil War and soldiers' views of the war. The lesson includes several options to complete...
Perkins School for the Blind
Wheel of Fortune Game
Games are great for practicing any number of basic skills. Here is a set of wonderful instructions for making a braille version of a spinning game, where children win points by correctly reading/identifying the high-frequency words the...