Curated OER
Using Pre-reading Strategies: Infer
Use this resource to support your class practicing inference with poetry and visual art. The plan calls for an examination of "The Scream" by Edvard Munch and the "Mona Lisa" to promote speculation about artist's intent. From there, it...
Curated OER
Biopoem
Reinforce the actions, emotions, and characteristics that determine what a character is like by having your middle schoolers create a biopoem using the model presented here. You could engage them first by having them write a poem about...
Denver Art Museum
Putting Images into Words
Engage your class in art analysis of Indian Look-Alike by Melanie Yazzie. Using this work of art as inspiration, writers compose a poem or short story. After a peer review session, the teacher conveys information about the work of art as...
Curated OER
Analyzing Poetic Devices: Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays" and Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz"
Analyze the poetic devices used in Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays" to those found in Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz." Critical analysts discuss poetic meter and rhythm and its relationship to theme. They compare and contrast...
Curated OER
1900 America: Historical Voices, Poetic Visions
Students examine the United States at the turn of the century. Using primary source documents, they interpret them within a specific historical context. Using this information, they write a poem with metaphors and a specific meter They...
Curated OER
Spring: Paul Laurence Dunbar
Explore the abundance of spring, no matter what season you are covering in your class! Using the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar, GALE Biography Resource Center, and Litfinder, pupils work on researching the poet and analyzing the use of...
Curated OER
Creepy Read Week
Here's a clever technology twist to writing in the round. Participants rotate through a series of computers adding to stories and editing by keystroke and mouse click. "Locked" forms prevent the loss of stories filled with suspense and...
Curated OER
Haiku Movies
Pupils create a movie to illustrate an original haiku poem in this upper-elementary school, Language Arts lesson utilizing technology. The lesson meets state standards for Language Arts and includes a materials list and possible lesson...
Curated OER
Pirate Poems
Students increase their awareness of the fundamental of poetry. They write their own poetry on a familiar topic. Students create a paper-bag puppet on which to display their poem. They are told that poetry is a special way to tell a story.
Curated OER
Capitalization and Punctuation
First and second graders explore writing conventions. They add question marks or periods to the end of teacher generated sentences on sentence strips. They locate punctuation marks in poems and write original sentences using appropriate...
Curated OER
Pop Concert in Iran
Read, analyze, and critique a newspaper article about a concert with a Western singer and an Iranian band. Scholars will assess key vocabulary terms within the article, learn how to understand a short news report, and hone in on how the...
Curated OER
Lesson Plan 3: Great Book, Gross Book
It's time for your scholars to become book reviewers! Start with a fun review of foods: are they good or gross? Learners apply these evaluation techniques to books, recording their thoughts on large pieces of butcher paper. Simply have...
Novelinks
The Hobbit: Biopoem
As part of their reading of The Hobbit, readers create a biopoem for one of Tolkien's characters.
Curated OER
Do You Want to Be My Friend?
Learners participate in a variety of emergent and early-literacy activities based on a "friendship" theme. Learners listen to the book Do You Want to Be My Friend by Eric Carle, then echo read, choral read, and independently read...
Curated OER
Mouse Mess
Scholars practice rhyming and phonemic awareness using trade books and poetry. They will listen to the book Mouse Mess several times throughout the week, identifying rhyming words, and matching words that begin with the same sound. Then...
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...
Shutterfly
Photo Story Lesson Plan
After reading Loree Leedy's There's a Frog in My Throat: 440 Animal Sayings a Little Bird Told Me, kids create and illustrate their own poems that convey the meaning of an idiom. The poems are then transferred into Shutterfly's Photo...
Poetry Out Loud
The Tabloid Ballad
What do the theme song from Gilligan's Island, the nursery rhyme "The Owl and the Pussy-Cat," and the poem "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" all have in common? Why, they're ballads of course! Challenge your young balladeers to compose their...
National Gallery of Art
The First African American Regiment
Young historians examine a memorial sculpture of the first African American regiment in the Civil War, and then compare how the experiences of the regiment are portrayed in letters and poetry, as well as in the motion picture, Glory.
Maryland Department of Education
The Concept of Diversity in World Literature Lesson 12: Author's Purpose - Yeats and Achebe
Is there such a thing as fate/luck? Can one fight destiny? As part of their study of Chinua Achebe's purpose in writing Things Fall Apart, class members answer these questions from Achebe's point of view and then from William Butler...
Curated OER
Pablita Indian Legends
Scholars are introduced to the characteristics of a legend. They read and discuss Old Father Story Teller by Pablita Velarde. Then, in groups, they write and illustrate a poem based on one of the legends from the book. This lesson plan...
EngageNY
Grade 11 ELA Module 2: Unit 2, Lesson 10
Audre Lorde's poem "From the House of Yemanjá" describes the speaker carrying two women on her back—she must be strong! Pupils read the second stanza using instructional activity 10 of 14 from the Grade 11 ELA Module 2: Unit 2 series....
Academy of American Poets
The Immigrant Experience
The Buttonhook by Mary Jo Salter is the focus of a unit that explores the immigration experience to Ellis Island. First, scholars bring in an artifact that represents their heritage. A group-exercise allows them to share and discuss...