Curated OER
Creative Writing: Children's Building Blocks
Your class can participate in a writing program involving four building blocks. By exploring words, sentences, writing forms, and story organization, they improve their creative writing skills throughout this year-long unit. Early in the...
Curated OER
Poems and Resources for the Struggling Writer
The 11th resource in a 12-part poetry unit is a bonus lesson comprised of poems, activities, and resources that review the essential concepts of the unit.
Curated OER
Playing Vocabulary Basketball
Learners view a slide show featuring famous athletes and educational institutions that have played a part in the history of basketball. They participate in a game in which a basketball is tossed from person to person as facts and...
Curated OER
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Christmas Bells
Students read and analyze the anti-slavery poem, "Christmas Bells" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. They discuss the content and form of the poem, write an essay, write an original poem, examine how this anti-slavery poem was converted...
EngageNY
Grade 9 ELA Module 2: Unit 1, Lesson 12
What happens when a tenuous grasp on sanity begins to slip? Compare Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" and Emily Dickinson's "I Felt a Funeral, in my Brain" with a lesson plan focused on developing a common central idea. High...
Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation
Culminating Writing Project - Reporting on Angel Island
The unit study of Angel Island Immigration Station concludes with scholars using information from the previous lessons to craft a news story about the Angel Island program.
Curated OER
Bio-Poems and U.S. History
Students explore U.S. History by writing poems. For this United States leader biography lesson, students identify elements needed to create a good poem, and write a Bio-Poem about themselves. Students utilize the same form to write a...
National Endowment for the Humanities
In Emily Dickinson's Own Words: Letters and Poems
Analyze the depth and beauty of American Literature by reading Emily Dickinson's letters and poems. The class analyzes Dickinson's poetic style and discusses Thomas Wentworth Higginson's editorial relationship with Dickinson. They pay...
National Endowment for the Humanities
Walt Whitman to Langston Hughes: Poems for a Democracy
Explore the idea of democratic poetry. Upper graders read Walt Whitman, examining daguerreotypes, and compare Whitman to Langston Hughes. They describe aspects of Whitman's I Hear America Singing to Langston Hughes' Let America Be...
Facing History and Ourselves
Speaking Up and Speaking Out
The final lesson plan in the Standing Up for Democracy unit offers class members a way they can stand up and speak out by crafting spoken word poetry, or Slam poetry. After analyzing several examples, individuals reflect on one positive...
MENSA Education & Research Foundation
Ecosystems
Explore the Earth's different ecosystems through four lessons, an assessment, and extension activities. Lessons include informative text and step-by-step instructions to apply knowledge in interactive, and thought provoking ways; such as...
Curated OER
Personal Poetry Books
Students work in the classroom and in the computer lab to produce a Personal Poetry Book.
Curated OER
Poetry Cyberbook
Emerging poets design a website and then post seven original poems as well as their written critique of these poems. Although the resource mentions Inspiration and FrontPage technologies, any software could be substituted.
Curated OER
The Poetry of Giving
Learn about philanthropy and poetic conventions with an inclusive lesson about Bill Gates. After learning about Mr. Gates' humanitarian efforts in the world, sixth graders use alliteration, onomatopoeia, rhyme, rhythm, and refrain in...
Curated OER
Goals and Perseverance
Define the word perseverance to have learners understand why it is important in reaching goals. Young scholars research how Martin Luther King needed perseverance to accomplish his goals. They write acrostic poems using the word...
Curated OER
Nature Poems
Learners explore the visual, auditory, and verbal worlds offered by iLife applications to create a project that engages all learners and learning styles. They create a class book and CD of nature poems and artwork.
EngageNY
Writing the Final Narrative: Monologue or Concrete Poem
Get inspired to help those creative juices flow. Using the resource, scholars write their final, best version of their narrative monologues or concrete poems. Next, they prepare for a performance task by watching and discussing a video...
Curated OER
Native American Poetry
Identify text features, make inferences, and discover the cultural significance of Native American Poetry. Sixth graders read several Native American poems and use graphic organizers and literature response logs to record their feelings...
EngageNY
Grade 11 ELA Module 2: Unit 2, Lesson 12
Why is it important to make connections across texts? Scholars discover the answer with instructional activity 12 of 14 from the Grade 11 ELA Module 2: Unit 2 series. Pupils analyze the development of ideas in three nonfiction texts,...
EngageNY
Introduction: Writing a Narrative of Adversity
A little adversity is good for writing. Scholars review narrative-based monologues and concrete poems and choose which genre to use to express their own theme of adversity. Pupils also consider how to structure their narratives by...
Curated OER
Writing Limericks
Eighth graders compose or create works of communication for specific audiences and purposes. They locate, access, and select relevant information from a variety of sources. They revise and edit their work to improve content, organization...
National Park Service
The Poet's Toolbox
If you need a lesson for your poetry unit, use two poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ("Rain in Summer" and "The Slave in the Dismal Swamp") and a resource on Elements of Poetry. The lesson plan guides you through activities on...
EngageNY
Grade 11 ELA Module 1: Unit 1, Lesson 6
Get ready for the big reveal! Scholars work in the final instructional activity of the unit to discuss the revelation in Browning's poem My Last Duchess. Pupils discuss homework in pairs before working in small groups to identify text...
EngageNY
Inferring about Character: Close Reading of the Poem “Inside Out” and Introducing QuickWrites
Grab a partner! Scholars partner up to take a second look at the verse novel Inside Out & Back Again. They discuss questions about and connections to the novel and then learn how to complete a Quick Write task properly. To finish,...