Nervous about giving a speech or presenting to your class? Use these resources from Ford's Theatre to learn more about demonstrating the oratory skills necessary for successful public speaking.
This resource addresses pace, emphasis, diction, tone, and volume.
In this lesson students will review the use of understood "you" in writing and create their own creative nonfiction essay using understood "you" as the narrative technique.
This is a College- and Career-Ready Standards showcase lesson plan.
Students will view the short video that tells the overview of the story of the Clotilda and her survivors. They will use their own notes to write a paragraph summarizing the information from the video to tell the story of the ship Clotilda starting with its voyage from Mobile to Africa, including the settlement of Africatown after Emancipation, and ending with the discovery of its wreckage in 2019. Using a template, students will also create an MLA citation for the YouTube video. In writing the summary and creating the citation, students will demonstrate their knowledge of West Africa and Mobile as sites of slave trade, their ability to summarize in writing, and their capability to cite information appropriately.
This unit introduces the concept of cause and effect with Trinka Hakes Noble's books about Jimmy and his boa constrictor. Each lesson begins with the teacher reading a new story about Jimmy and his boa and the chaos they bring to each place they visit. Class discussions about each event and its cause are followed by tasks for the students to help illustrate understanding of the concept. Students create cause-and-effect pictures, puzzles, and flow charts as they explore the genre. As a culminating activity, students write their own book with causes and effects, which are assessed with a rubric.
Dig into reading practice and meet a cute little mole who loves dirt. Learn about finding the main idea in an informational text about the components that make up soil and get the dirt on how details can support the main idea.
The exclamation mark or exclamation point ends a sentence that expresses a strong feeling or an important command. It is also used at the end of short interjections such as "Wow!" or "Ouch!" and to draw attention to a fact or opinion (I am the greatest soccer player in the world!). Since exclamation points show powerful emotions, they should be used sparingly in writing and should be only used one at a time. In this classroom resource, the students will learn where to place an exclamation mark. This resource offers informational material, videos, games, quizzes, and worksheets to help further understand this concept.
Students will write a fictional narrative incorporating the literary elements of plot (character, setting, problem, rising action, climax, falling action, solution). They will also include multimedia components and visual displays in their presentations to enhance the development of ideas and themes.
Students will read another student's narrative and respond to the plot questions attached to be sure they comprehend the text and the literary element of plot used in the text.
This activity results from the ALEX Resource Development Summit.
In this interactive lesson, students explore the importance of setting in literature and apply their learning to the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Students are introduced to the three main components of the setting: time, place, and the social conditions in the story. Using these three components as a framework, students gain a deeper understanding of the setting in To Kill a Mockingbird by learning about the 1930s. This resource also includes embedded vocabulary practice. A final writing assignment asks the students to write an essay synthesizing their knowledge of the time period and the book. This lesson works for students who are already engaged in studying the novel and have read at least the first two chapters.
The students will create a landform using modeling clay in a small group setting.
This lesson was created as part of the 2016 NASA STEM Standards of Practice Project, a collaboration between the Alabama State Department of Education and NASA Marshall Space Flight Center.
Circular stories follow a “round” pattern—they begin and end in the same way. Like the cycle of seasons or the life cycle, circular stories follow a predictable series of events that returns to the starting point. Building on students' existing knowledge of plot structure and of cycles in other content areas, this lesson invites students to use a circle plot graphic organizer to explore the structure of this type of story. The cyclical nature of the stories is an excellent match for discussion of prediction and sequencing skills. After exploring the features of circular plot stories and reading a model story, such as Laura Joffe Numeroff's If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, students write their own stories individually or in small groups.
Students will identify adjectives in the book Go Away Big Green Monster by Ed Emberley. They will choose an adjective and a shape to create an adjective monster using construction paper and chalk/crayon. They will create features using paper sculpture techniques.
Students will read Kay Haring's picture book, Keith Haring: The Boy Who Just Kept Drawing. Students will answer questions from the text. Students will identify break dancing as his inspiration. The students will watch a few minutes of a Break Dancing video from YouTube. They will draw their own dancing figure using motion lines to illustrate movement.
This activity was created as a result of the Arts COS Resource Development Summit.
In this activity, students will read a familiar poem with appropriate phrasing, rhythm, and meaningful expression. In addition, students will identify the main idea and details within the poem, using text evidence to support their answers when completing the question set included with the text on ReadWorks.
This activity results from the ALEX Resource Development Summit.
This media gallery from Shakespeare Uncovered will help your students understand the many plots in A Midsummer Night's Dream, how they move the play forward, and how they are intertwined. Videos, text-dependent questions, and graphic organizers will highlight what students need to know about the play's Athenian court as well as its lovers, fairies, and rude "mechanicals."
Students will use primary sources to gain information about Hernando de Soto, his route, and his interactions with Native Americans in Alabama. Students will read two articles in order to identify information about Hernando de Soto and his journey through Alabama. Students will also learn about the impact of European Exploration on the Native Americans who were in Alabama in the 1500s.
This lesson was created in partnership with the Alabama Department of Archives and History.
In this collaborative inquiry unit, the real gold is the inquiry skills and content area knowledge that students develop. The class works in small groups, each focusing on one aspect of the same big topic, such as the Gold Rush. After skimming related texts, the class brainstorms people, places and things associated with the topic and develops a list of five or six main subtopics. Students then work in small groups to research one of the subtopics, practicing specific research skills as they work. Finally, students choose an activity, such as an oral report, trivia game, or newspaper, to teach what they have learned to the rest of the class. Group accountability and individual responsibility are built into this lesson process.
While this unit uses the Gold Rush as an example, any event or geographical area could be substituted.
Students will listen to Ludwig van Beethoven's 5th Symphony and write a descriptive essay about how the music influenced them. They will create watercolor artwork while listening to the music.
Through class conversation and research, students determine the difference between private and personal information and what is okay to share in a digital environment. Students will also discuss the two ways to leave a digital footprint: one that tells others who you are and one that tells others where you are.
This activity was created as a result of the DLCS COS Resource Development Summit.
The purpose of this activity is to provide a comprehensive list of possible questions that can be used to build comprehension into the viewing/reading of the different versions of “The Three Little Pigs.” These questions will support students’ building of mental maps that will allow them to apply their understanding of two stories for comparison and contrast. Once the videos/books have been seen and questions discussed, students will be able to complete a Venn diagram that compares the story’s literary components (i.e., setting, characters, plot, and sequence).
This resource was created in partnership with Dothan City Schools.
Meet all of your favorite REACH with STEM animals here in one lesson! Hear their voices, read along, and learn to compare two texts on the same topic. Use the lesson scorecard on page 2 to track your progress with the REACH with STEM series.
This resource provides students with a variety of informational and fictional texts on the same topic which could be used to compare and contrast.
In this lesson, students will research one Native American group from each of the six main biomes in North America. Students will use their developing technology and language arts skills to find reliable sources on the internet, evaluate and integrate information from these texts, select a suitable digital platform to share their findings, and create a cohesive presentation showcasing their mastery of the learning outcomes. Students will discover the climate, landforms, water, and other natural resources available within each region and how they were used by the natives living there. Students will explore the relationships between the cultures found within each region and its resources.
This unit was created as part of the ALEX Interdisciplinary Resource Development Summit.
Academic writing tasks often require students to use words to describe quantitative data found in tables, charts, or graphs. This lesson plan integrates quantitative reasoning and critical thinking with opportunities for writing as students examine a table with numerical data and then analyze the content, language, and organization of a verbal description of the same data. Students then write and evaluate their own descriptions of data from tables. The lesson's discourse-based approach to language choices aims to raise students' awareness about verb tense selection and reasons for shifting tenses.
Science fiction movies take it for granted that someday humans, or an alien race, will travel faster than the speed of light and build an intergalactic empire. Scientists aren't so sure that this is possible. It turns out that approaching the speed of light is very difficult. If Einstein's theories are correct, nothing that has mass can travel at the speed of light.
This informational material will apply a precalculus concept--limits of functions at infinity--to a well-known scientific theory--Einstein's theory of relativity. There is a video and links to additional information included.
After reading William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, students study the lyrics and video of Taylor Swift's "Love Story" to analyze how she transformed the tragic Shakespearean drama into a love song with a happy ending.
This activity results from the ALEX Resource Gap Project.
Students will present their Endangered Animal poster (from the learning activity Endangered Animals: Part 2) to the class. While listening to the presentations, they will take notes on two other students' endangered animal poster presentations using the Endangered Animal Presentations Notes. They will then use their notes from the poster presentation to write a three-paragraph informational essay.
This activity results from the ALEX Resource Development Summit.
Students will be given the task to build a dam that will stand against water. Students will design and build a scaled model of a dam and test the model for the ability to reduce the impact of a flood. Students will build a scaled model dam and test the dam’s effectiveness in preventing flood waters. Students will evaluate the efficacy of the dam they constructed and built. Students will contemplate what actions can be taken and materials that could be used in order to create a more effective dam in the future.
This unit was created as part of the ALEX Interdisciplinary Resource Development Summit.
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.
This informational material offers teachers several simple ways to teach students about blends through reading games.
Students will demonstrate command of the conventions of Standard English grammar and usage when writing when they write a paragraph about themselves. Students will practice self-respect by identifying characteristics they like about themselves.
This activity was created as a result of the ALEX Resource Development Summit.
At a time when nationalism and extremism are on the rise, questions about the importance of understanding and acceptance raised in the “Hath not a Jew eyes?” speech from The Merchant of Venice are particularly relevant. In these videos from Shakespeare Uncovered, explore what it means to be an outsider and the impact of persecution. Support materials engage students with contemporary connections through discussion questions and a handout analyzing Shylock’s speech.
Be sure to read the Discussion Questions and use the Handout, along with the other materials under the Support Materials for Use with Students section to fully teach the standard.
This activity is designed to help students write an argumentative paragraph using textual evidence to support their claim. Through this activity students will be able to use a graphic organizer, Determining if a Myth is a Myth as they read two myths and analyze whether or not they meet the criteria of a myth. This activity can be used after the learning activity What Makes a Myth a Myth. Students will then use the information from the graphic organizer to complete an argumentative paragraph template. The final product will be a well-written argumentative paragraph.
This activity was created as a result of the ALEX Resource Development Summit.
HyperSlides are digital lessons/units that help students learn the material in a way that is engaging and inquiry-based. Students will work together to complete a HyperSlides unit centering around animal adaptations for standards in grades 3-5. Students will work creatively and collaboratively with a variety of Course of Study standards that engage students through using Google Slides and Hyperlinks to assist in the understanding of animal adaptations. This project will take several class periods to complete. After an introduction to the Hyperslides, students are encouraged to work at their own pace, but Hyperslides can be assigned on a daily basis.
This Lesson Plan was created in partnership with the Birmingham Zoo.
This lesson incorporates graphic novels to help students expand their reading, writing, research, and technology skills. Students first read graphic novels to become familiar with the text structure, then research a self-selected topic using web-based resources. Students follow the research process and synthesize the information they obtained to create their graphic novel using the Comic Life software or other comic software. This unit works best with students who are already familiar with writing a research paper.
By developing a clear understanding of figurative language, students can further comprehend texts that contain metaphorical and lexical meanings beyond the basic word level. In this lesson, students explore figurative language with a focus on the literal versus the metaphorical translations of idioms. Through read-alouds, teacher modeling, and student-centered activities that are presented in the classroom, students will further develop their understanding of figurative language.
Children learn alphabetical order in this fun educational computer activity. Put the alphabet in the correct ABC order by clicking and dragging the letters. It's a fun way for kids to learn the alphabet.
