Curated OER
The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses
Second graders use literature journals and discussion groups to summarize and improve their reading comprehension. In this reading skills lesson, 2nd graders discuss animals they've loved and read the story The Girl Who Loved Wild...
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Risk Watch Reporters Use Electrical Safety Eyes: Prevention is the Key
Students review three true electrical stories, research true dangers involved in electrical discharges, identify and work to eliminate electrical hazards in their homes, and create electrical safety message to share with peers.
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Emmett Till: A Classroom Sonnet
Who is Emmet Till? An important historical figure, your kids will be shocked by his story! Discover the details of his life and collaborate to write a crown of sonnets in the style of Marilyn Nelson.
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Unicorns, Dragons, and Other Magical Creatures
Students exoplore the world of imaginary creatures (dragons, unicorns, etc.) They discuss the creature's special attributes and read stories about them. They create their own magical creatures in the form of puppets.
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Making and Using a Graphic Organizer for Solving a Mystery
Students create tables in a word processing program which helps them organize their text clues when reading a mystery story. They develop reading comprehension strategies while using a computer based graphic organizer in order to solve...
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Nahuatl Culture
Students read stories, look at maps, and write journal entries to learn about the language and artwork of Nahuatl culture. For this Nahuatl culture lesson plan, students research the Nahuatl culture and present their findings.
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Creating a Found Poem
Teach your English learners about theme through this found poem project. Class members read two versions of O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi": the original version and a synopsis. After learning about themes and connecting theme to their...
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Civil War Essay
Upper graders explore equality by writing an essay. They read the story Pink and Say by Patricia Polacco, and discuss the meaning of the story and its relevance to Civil War events. Learners investigate the five writing process steps and...
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Archetypal Images and Polarities
Here is a rather esoteric resource that presents the archetypes found in “The Epic of Gilgamesh,” and would be appropriate for a college-level psychology or literature class, or as a teacher resource. Considered the “world’s oldest...
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The Tell-Tale Heart
Readers listen and critically read fictional prose to answer prediction questions at designated stopping points, and then they give a summary of the short story. This lesson is ideal for English language learners developing English...
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Stone Soup
First graders examine the use of logic, deduction, and inference to determine the answers to riddles. They listen to a teacher read aloud of Heather Forest's, Stone Soup before discussing the story which gauges their comprehension....
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Storybook Theater
Tell a story visually using this resource. Learners design a storybook theater by creating a book and painting watercolor pictures describing scenes from the story. This is a creative means to have your class practice summarizing skills.
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Making Connections
Fourth graders investigate visual imagery to aid reading comprehension. In this reading strategies lesson, 4th graders discover how visual imagery helps in comprehending a story. Students use a reader's notebook to record connections.
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The Meaning Behind the Mask
Students explore the world of African masks and storytelling. They create masks that tell stories of their own.
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I'm Published! A Parts of Speech Book
Reinforce the importance of the writing process with this publication lesson plan. Elementary and middle schoolers compose a parts of speech book which includes one page each for nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions,...
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Octopus Lesson Plan
Children explore the life of an octopus. They listen to a story, answer prediction questions and share their prior knowledge of animals. Young scholars observe the defense mechanism of the octopus. They create an imaginary defense...
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The Outside Dog
Pupils observe the book, "The Outside Dog," and predict the events of the story. At the conclusion of the story, students act out various paragraphs from the book and write about specified characters. Additional cross-curriculum...
Shmoop
ELA.CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.2
There is nothing more frustrating than discussing theme in literature, and now the Common Core requires that your learners determine two or more, and discuss the development of it throughout the text. This is crazy, but manageable with...
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Beginning to Read
Students explore various books read by their classmates outside of school. After reading books of their choice, the class creates a bulletin board summarizing their main ideas of the book and their opinion of the book using Flat Stanley.
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Journey to Topaz: KWHL Strategy
Japanese Internment and World war II are the focus of a KWHL strategy used to scaffold for a reading of Journey to Topaz, Yoshiko Uchida's story of 11-year-old Yuki Sakane and her family. Complete directions for the activity and...
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Read and Retain
Third graders practice strategies for aiding in their comprehension of material they read. Through guided practice, they read a selected piece of text and answer questions pertaining to what they have read. They practice looking back in...
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The Rooster Who Went to His Uncle's Wedding
Second graders read and discuss the story "The Rooster Who Went to His Uncle's Wedding" in the Scott Foresman series. They summarize the story. They understand the influence of Latin American Folktales. They complete a quiz on the story.
Read Works
Retelling A Life
Use comic strip format to help organize and sequence events in a story. The lesson here focuses on The Story of Jackie Robinson: Bravest Man in Baseball; however, this strategy could be used for summarizing any text. Pupils must choose...
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Break It Down!
Young scholars practice the strategy of summarization in order to comprehend a text. They drill on how to delete unimportant information, repeated information and substitute easy terms for lists of items. Each student receives a copy of...