Curated OER
The Highwayman
Fifth graders re-read the story "The Highwayman" understanding the term "narrative verse". As a paired activity, they predict who or what might be the audience and provide feedback.
Curated OER
Keeping the Dream Alive
Students explore the life and works of black American playwrights to gain insight into how their works reflect and influence the black American experience.
Curated OER
Figuring Out Frost
Fourth graders read "The Runaway" by Robert Frost and analyze it for its literal and symbolic meanings. They compare their personal experiences with the poet's suggestions about youthful attitudes and behaviors. Some nice worksheets are...
Curated OER
Colorado Animals Newsletter and Directed Web Page
Students select a Colorado animal, develop a Directed Web page, and research their animal. Each member of the group combine their research and develop a Newsletter.
Curated OER
Comparing Characters Across Two Short Stories
Ninth graders listen to a read aloud of two short stories focusing on literary devices. The write about the settings and realism of the stories, and decide each main character handles the conflict he faces with nature.
Curated OER
Technology-commected Folklife Lesson Plan: Fables
Learners discuss ways the stories were alike and different. The teacher demonstrate how to draw a Venn diagram using Microsoft Word. They label the two circles and enter the likenesses and differences on the diagram.
Curated OER
Legends of the Fifth
Fifth graders discover the difference between myths, legends, and folk tales. They summarize legends. They work together to dramatize legends and then create their own legend using the writing process. Handouts and worksheets are included.
Curated OER
Human Rights/Civil Rights
Learners connect their examination of the novel Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry to a historical and contemporary study of the issue of human rights and civil rights by creating a HyperStudio stack.
Curated OER
Alliteration
Students write and illustrate a sentence which names a letter of the alphabet. The sentence should have subject, verb, describing words, and incorporate alliterative techniques.
Curated OER
VH1 Driven: Kanye West, Lesson 2
Students compose an original rap. They discuss the career and music of Kanye West, discuss their pre-writing worksheet, and write an original rap using a Final Draft Worksheet.
Curated OER
Proverbs
Students examine the origins of proverbs and examine several examples. Then they create their own collection of existing proverbs. Later they write their own original ones and share with the class.
National Endowment for the Humanities
Neh: Edsit Ement: Introducing Metaphors Through Poetry
This lesson is designed to help students begin to engage with metaphors on a deeper and more abstract level. The lesson will begin with a poem containing metaphors accessible at all levels, and with each poem, the lesson will progress in...
Read Works
Read Works: 4th Grade Lesson: Similes and Metaphors
[Free Registration/Login Required] A lesson in which students use the book Poetry for Young People: Langston Hughes edited by David Roessel and Arnold Rampersad to learn to identify and understand the use of simile and metaphor in...
Read Works
Read Works: 3rd Grade Lesson: Poetry
[Free Registration/Login Required] A lesson plan in which students use two provided poems to learn to identify and understand the use of similes and metaphors in poetry. Lesson includes direct teaching, guided practice, and independent...
ReadWriteThink
Read Write Think: Teaching Poetry Through Riddles
Excellent teaching resource that attempts to teach poetic concepts to middle schoolers by using riddles. Discusses riddles' use of metaphor, simile, and imagery, and relates these concepts to the students' understanding of poetry....
ReadWriteThink
Read Write Think: Stairway to Heaven Examining Metaphor in Popular Music
Contains plans for two lessons that ask students to make connections between literary texts and popular culture texts like song lyrics. After checking popular culture texts for literary elements, these elements are then examined in...
ReadWriteThink
Read Write Think: The Ab Cs of Poetry
Contains plans for a poetry lesson that asks young scholars to write poems after brainstorming metaphors and other ideas as a group. Ideas are groups by different themes, like letters of the alphabet. In addition to objectives and...
Writing Fix
Writing Fix: Mathematical Recipe Metaphors
In this lesson, Barry Lane's books entitled Reviser's Toolbox and 51 Wacky We-Search Reports are used as mentor texts. Used as a refeference, the concept of recipe poems can be instructed to the students and the genre of "how to" books,...
Writing Fix
Writing Fix: Colorful Sensory Poems
This lesson plan allows students to explore color - both in literal and figurative terms. Students will read books about color, discuss the emotion involved with color, and incorporate color metaphors to write poems using the graphic...
Writing Fix
Writing Fix: How to Make Poetry
Students learn how to write poetry through ten Writing Workshop mini-lessons. Students complete the graphic organizers provided while learning to notice details, write similes and metaphors, and create patterns in their writing.
Writing Fix
Writing Fix: Unique Metaphor Collections
In this instructional activity, the first chapter of the novel Girl with a Pearl Earring is used as a mentor text. Students will identify metaphors and then create their own unique metaphorical descriptions that they will begin to...
Yad Vashem, The World Holocaust Remembrance Center
Yad Vashem: Written in Pencil in the Sealed Freightcar
Dan Pagis experienced the horrors of the Holocaust as a young child and only addresses the trauma he experienced through poetry. In the poem "Written in Pencil in a Sealed Freightcar" he uses Genesis and the murder of Abel by Cain as a...
Read Works
Read Works: Figurative Language 3rd Grade Unit
[Free Registration/Login Required] In this three-lesson plan unit, students use the book If You Hopped Like a Frog by David Schwartz and some additional short texts to learn to identify and understand the use of simile and metaphor in...
ReadWriteThink
Read Write Think: Writing About Writing: An Extended Metaphor Assignment
Contains plans for five lessons that teach extended metaphors using Richard Wilbur's poem "The Writer." In addition to objectives and standards, this instructional plan contains links to sites used in the lessons as well as assessment...