Students first learn to sing the song "A-Hunting We Will Go" with its original verses and several new verses that support rhyming concepts. Then they brainstorm pairs of rhyming words and create their own verses for the song. As a follow-up activity, students can create original verses using other simple rhyming songs as a framework.
Phonics is an important part of literacy instruction that can be taught within the context of reading children's literature. This lesson incorporates the use of children's literature, in addition to various learning centers and activities that focus on learning about the letter m. Students will learn about phonics by participating in an integrated array of activities, including reading, writing, mathematics, music, art, and technology.
This lesson uses music and art in a vocabulary study of unfamiliar words from the song "America the Beautiful," increasing students' vocabulary while also increasing their knowledge of U.S. geography. A discussion to activate students' prior knowledge about sights and scenery throughout the United States is followed by a read-aloud and introduction to the song "America the Beautiful," which is then sung in each session of the lesson. Students learn the meanings of the song's words through shared reading and the use of context clues and images. Students then use photographs, illustrations, and descriptive language to create a mural shaped like the United States. Finally, through pictures and words, students reflect on what they have learned. This lesson is appropriate and adaptable for any patriotic event or holiday, and many of the vocabulary strategies are adaptable for other texts or word lists, as well.
"I feel good." "It was nice." "That was bad." Students respond to teachers' questions with these generic descriptions all the time, leaving teachers to dig deeper to figure out what students are really trying to say. Second-language learners also struggle to use descriptive words in written and oral language and tend to overuse common words, such as good, bad, and nice, due to their lack of knowledge of specific synonyms. In this multisession lesson, word webs are used to expose students to synonyms for common words, to help students choose synonyms that are appropriate for a given context, and to encourage students to use more descriptive words in their speech and writing. Student pairs then use words from the web in a skit they present to the class.
This is a ten-part unit. Students are introduced to the vocabulary of film as they go through the process of creating a short original film. This unit provides instruction on key aspects of digital video filmmaking: plotting, script, storyboarding, camera work (shots, angles), and editing (transitions, title, credits, visual effects, sound effects, etc.). Once students are familiar with the techniques and terms introduced in this lesson, they can apply their new skills to bring other content areas to life through filmmaking. The activities involved in filmmaking can be particularly helpful to English language learners (ELLs) because the visual component helps ELLs consolidate their knowledge.
The goal of this lesson is to introduce the academic vocabulary of economics and financial literacy through children's books. In Babymouse: Cupcake Tycoon, there are a variety of economics and financial literacy vocabulary words embedded in the text, which involve a school fundraiser. Through a think-aloud read-aloud, the lesson will illustrate how to introduce key economic concepts/vocabulary through the story. Students use puppets to conduct interviews about economics vocabulary in the story and then create vocabulary cards. As a final project, they create video posters, using either PowerPoint or Glogster.
This lesson comprises five lessons that students love. During the first session, read aloud The Houdini Box by Brian Selznick to the class. Students then follow the steps of the writing process to create a new ending for this book. Students gain experience brainstorming, drafting, editing, and polishing their writing. Because their story endings must flow well with the rest of the book, students must understand what the book is about. The goal is for them to understand what they're reading and to demonstrate their knowledge of the book's content and their own creativity through a writing piece.
In this unit, students explore a variety of resources—texts, images, sounds, photos, and other artifacts—to learn more about the Holocaust. Beginning with journal writings and a picture book to introduce the central issues, the unit focuses on student-centered inquiry. Students explore a range of print and non-print resources through extensive online inquiry activities. Progressing from individual work to a group learning project, the unit culminates in publishing the group's findings in topic-based newspapers.
The lesson includes complete lists of picture books, read-aloud books, reference texts, and online sites and collections that allow teachers to customize the activities to fit the available resources and students' specific research interests.
Mysteries are a great way to hook students into writing about fictional happenings. In this lesson, students engage themselves in The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by examining the illustrations in the book and choosing one for which to create a Mystery Cube and then a creative writing piece. Finally, students present their mysteries to the class and allow students to guess to which illustration their mystery corresponds.
After reading Richard Wright's short novel Rite of Passage, students will demonstrate their understanding of plot, character, and conflict by writing recommendations for the protagonists' future to a juvenile court system judge. Students are guided through the development of these recommendations, including attention to counterarguments based on potential prevailing attitudes in the justice system at the time.
Students begin by brainstorming types of poetry, then examining themed poetry collections to find examples. They create a working definition of poetry that they will revisit throughout the unit. Next students reexamine the collections, identifying what the poems have in common and generating a list of characteristics of thematic poetry collections. Students then begin work on their own poetry collection. In each session, they read, analyze, and write a different form of poetry, including diamante, cinquain, 5W, Bio, I Am, Name, Acrostic, Limerick, and Two-Voice poems. For some forms, they write about themselves and for others, they interview and write about a classmate, but all the poems follow the theme of "getting to know each other". Throughout the process, students complete a checklist to organize and track what they learn about poetry forms and elements of poetry. Graphic organizers are included for each poetic form.
Students will combine higher order thinking with creativity in this lesson from ReadWriteThink using diamante poems to illustrate the phenomenon of cause and effect. Students define and identify instances of cause and effect to help them generate their own examples. After practicing the diamante format in shared writing experiences, students construct their own diamante poems illustrating cause-and-effect scenarios of their choice.
Change is an inevitable part of life the challenges many young adults. Understanding and accepting change are key components in career and future planning. In this lesson, students explore the theme of change through allegory and poetry by reading an example of literary allegory and creating their own pictorial allegories. Students first define allegory and complete a pictorial allegory—or "me tree"—that displays phrases describing their interests, trails, and dreams on outlines of their hands. Next, they read and discuss a text, such as Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree or Sandy Stryker's Tonia the Tree ;that addresses change, and then review basic literary concepts as they complete a literary elements map and plot diagram. Finally, students further explore change, and what it means to them, as they write diamante poems related to the theme of change.
Studying poetry creates rich opportunities to encourage critical reading and thinking, as students analyze how poetry differs from prose in structure, form, purpose, and language. This lesson begins with a quick-write and a general discussion of the essential question What is poetry? Students are then reminded that different texts require different responses from readers, and to illustrate the differences they explore a poem and a prose selection on the same topic. Students discuss the two texts in cooperative groups, using a list of guiding questions. Each group then develops a list of descriptive statements about poetry, and the groups share their statements during a whole-class discussion that reconsiders the original question.
This lesson asks students to explore the ways that powerful and passionate words communicate the concepts of freedom, justice, discrimination, and the American Dream in Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. Students read, listen to, or view King's speech and pay close attention to his word use and use of literary devices. They analyze King's definitions of freedom, justice, discrimination, and dreams as demonstrated by the details in his speech. After a thorough exploration of the power of the speech, students choose powerful words and themes from the text and arrange them into original diamante poems.
While this lesson focuses on the "I Have a Dream" speech, it could be adapted to any of King's speeches, as well as to famous speeches by others, such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "Day of Infamy" speech, Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address," or Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman?"
Through multimodal activities, students will explore key elements of design such as color, shape, size, texture, density, and layout to understand and appreciate how these elements combine to convey meaning in Little Blue and Little Yellow, by Leo Lionni. Using art and digital media, they will then create their own designs to express meaning for setting, character relationships, and plot. Students will realize how to use design elements to read images and how meaning in picture books is equally conveyed in both words and images.
In this lesson, students create a name tag using information about themselves. Each student's name tag, while being similar, will visually represent personal information. These name tags will help the teacher learn students' names, but they will also help the students get to know each other and practice a visual, contemporary literacy when they interpret glyphs made by others. Students learn that communication is symbolic on a very fundamental level in this lesson.
Can athletes' moves be described as beautiful? How are grace, beauty, and aesthetics expressed through movement? These and many other questions will provide the framework for students' exploration of poetry in motion of athletes who participate in a variety of sports. Examining examples from their own experiences and from popular media, students learn about the aesthetic elements of athletics. After viewing images of various athletes, students create a class word wall with adjectives that describe movement. Students then write in reflective journals, view and interpret media, conduct Internet research, take digital photographs, and create original poems. As a culminating activity, the teacher presents students' poetry to the class in a multimedia presentation.
This lesson is not about markers over pencils; it is about developing a relationship between students and media and how such nurtured connections can support students' ideas in what they write and how they write it. Through in-class discussions about writing/drawing materials and carefully observing how an illustrator uses media to communicate ideas, students will see how materials can extend knowledge. This lesson provides opportunities for students to explore and experience the meaning potential of everyday writing and drawing tools in their own writing. The lesson can (and should be) adapted for older students.
As students read a short story, they “doodle,” either in a journal or using an online tool, responding to the text through images, symbols, shapes, and colors. They must be sure to represent all of the elements of the short story (setting, plot, character, point of view, theme) in their doodles. Students then work in small groups, to construct a graphic of their story on a sheet of newsprint with crayons or markers. When all groups have completed their graphics, they will present them to the class, explaining why they chose the elements they used. Finished graphics can be displayed on a class bulletin board, on walls, or scanned into a Web page.
Often simple texts can be effective vehicles for complex ideas. In this lesson, three picture books depict characters that are different from others in their communities. Each book deals with questions of identity, stereotyping, and discrimination. Sixth- through eighth-grade students are challenged to analyze these concepts through class discussions and writing. In addition to filling out a chart identifying how these three concepts are dealt with in each book, students summarize each story to analyze basic elements. After students understand some of the causes of discrimination, they discuss concrete actions they can take to stop it.
In this lesson, students will engage in an interactive activity that will enhance their understanding of story structure and story elements. After the teacher models the process of developing a plot, students work in cooperative groups to create semi-impromptu skits. Paper bags containing five unique props are distributed to each group; these props provide the impetus for the development of creative skits. Students then use online tools to outline the story elements in their skits. The lesson also promotes listening skills and critical thinking as students view other groups' performances and determine the conflict and resolution of each.
This lesson invites students to explore the things relevant to a character from Lorraine Hansberry's play A Raisin in the Sun, such as Mama's plant, to unlock the drama's underlying symbolism and themes. Students explore character traits and participate in active learning as they work with the play. Students use an interactive drama map to explore character and conflict and then write and share character-item poems.
This lesson invites students to use their understanding of modern experiences with digital technologies to make active meaning of an older text, such as Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, by asking students to create their own modern interpretation of specific events from the drama. Students first brainstorm a list of technologies they use and then imagine what would happen if Romeo and Juliet were set in a modern-day world and that technology was available to the characters. Students work in small groups to create technology profiles for characters in the play, and then discuss their ideas with the class. Next, students select from a variety of projects in which they re-imagine a scene from the play with modern technology incorporated. Finally, students share their projects with the class and discuss why they made the choices of scene and technology that they did.
Students compose epitaphs for deceased characters in the play Hamlet, paying particular attention to how their words appeal to the senses, create imagery, suggest mood, and set tone. Using a three-paneled poster board, students design gravestones to display their epitaphs. Students must capture the essence of their characters in their epitaphs, and their poster boards must reflect the themes that support their character's personality and station in life. The resulting projects make compelling hallway displays and provide students with an audience for their writing.
This activity can be easily adapted to another tragedy by changing the characters students write epitaphs about. For instance, students can write epitaphs for Romeo, Juliet, Mercutio, and Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet or write epitaphs for Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, Duncan, and Banquo in Macbeth.
In this lesson, students find a job for a character in a text they have read, prepare a resume for their character, and help them prepare for a job interview. Students first identify characteristics of effective resumes. After exploring an online introduction to writing a resume for a character, students search job ads for jobs that would be appropriate for a specific character from a text they have read. They then analyze that character, looking for direct and implied information about the character and textual evidence of the character's strengths and weaknesses. They work in small groups to write a resume for their character, based on their analysis. Finally, they explore interviewing tips and techniques and write ten job interview questions and accompanying answers designed to highlight the character's strengths.
Though the examples in this lesson focus on The Glass Menagerie, many other pieces of literature can be used.
What do students need to know to succeed in fourth grade (or third or fifth)? What supplies are needed? What rules and steps should be followed? These and many other questions provide the framework for students to write how-to essays for a specific audience—future fourth graders. Although this lesson focuses specifically on the fourth grade, it can be easily adapted for third or fifth graders. Students first learn about the how-to writing genre by reading an assortment of instruction manuals. This also demonstrates how how-to writing relates to their everyday lives. The teacher then models each step of the writing process as the students write about how to be a successful fourth graders. After students publish their writing, the final drafts are saved for the following year's fourth graders to read at the beginning of the next school year.
Expository texts are a key component of literacy but often do not get introduced to students until the later grades. This lesson helps third- through fifth-grade students explore the nature and structure of expository texts that focus on cause and effect. Students begin by activating prior knowledge about cause and effect; the teacher then models discovering these relationships in a text and recording in a graphic organizer what the relationships that the class finds. Students work in small groups to apply what they learned using related books and then write paragraphs outlining the cause-and-effect relationships they have found.
This is a task card which is given to students to carry out during a warm-up by themselves or in groups.
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This alignment results from the ALEX Health/PE COS Resource Alignment Summit.
In an effort to achieve the success that we all want for players and programs, the Alabama High School Athletic Association is committed to educating and promoting the concept of sportsmanship. Therefore, we have taken the initiative to create a Sportsmanship Manual to serve as a guide on our journey to becoming a model state high school athletic association. This manual contains valuable information and should serve as a key reference not only in planning for the upcoming athletic year but as a refresher of sportsmanship principles and practices all year round. To improve good sportsmanship, everyone needs to adhere to the policies in the manual.
This alignment results from the ALEX Health/PE COS Resource Alignment Summit.
Although making food is fun, it's important to know how to be safe. This means knowing when to get the help of an adult assistant, how to keep things clean, and how to use the kitchen safely.
This alignment results from the ALEX Health/PE COS Resource Alignment Summit.
Asthma is a lung condition that makes it hard to breathe. Lots of people have asthma, from young kids to the elderly. No one knows exactly why some people develop asthma. Experts think it might be a combination of environmental factors and genes. Asthma isn't contagious. You can't catch it from someone who has it. With normal breathing, air flows in through the nose or mouth and then into the windpipe (trachea). From there, it passes through the airways (bronchial tubes), into the lungs, and finally back out again.
This is a color-coded guide for dealing with and treating an asthma flare-up.
This alignment results from the ALEX Health/PE COS Resource Alignment Summit.
Follow the story of Kendrick Fincher, a football player from Rogers, Arkansas who suffered a heat stroke during a pre-season practice. Kendrick's mother shares her vivid memories of the difficult battle Kendrick lost to heat stroke. The video will help lead a discussion about exercising in the heat, humidity, and cold.
This alignment results from the ALEX Health/PE COS Resource Alignment Summit.
Dynamic stretching is a movement-based type of stretching. It uses the muscles themselves to bring about a stretch. It's different from traditional "static" stretching because the stretch position is not held. This resource contains videos of dynamic stretching techniques for high school students.
This alignment results from the ALEX Health/PE COS Resource Alignment Summit.
Miss Penny and the KidVision Kids visit the pediatrician's office to find out what happens during a wellness checkup. The kids sign in on the appointment sheet, get weighed and measured, they participate in a full wellness exam, and learn the names of the medical instruments the nurse and doctor use.
This alignment results from the ALEX Health/PE COS Resource Alignment Summit.
