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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. 

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 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.

In this video, students learn about long vowels. Students learn the sounds that long vowels make. They learn how special vowels are when making words. 

2018 Arkansas Teacher of the Year, Randi House, discusses how authors reveal personality and physical traits to help us learn more about the characters in stories. Ms. House shares an example of how she might be described if she were the character in a story and encourages students to think about words that might be used to describe themselves. The worksheet that accompanies this video provides a space for students to describe a character’s thoughts, speech, attitude, and actions, as well as a place for students to illustrate the character’s physical appearance. This worksheet can be used in conjunction with any novel or short story.

This lesson is a great way to teach both scientific and English content to a class, although the teacher can easily choose another book and subject area. In this lesson, students listen to poems in the book Science Verse by Jon Scieszka. Students then create diamante, acrostic, or theme poems with illustrations. To help increase fluency, students read their poems to the class. Finally, students create original poems using facts they have learned in the current science curriculum.

The teacher will present an informational text from the website, ReadWorks. Students will interact with this non-fiction text by annotating the text digitally. The students will answer the questions associated with the article as an assessment. This learning activity can introduce students to the concepts of recycling and conservation, serve as reinforcement after students have already learned this concept, or be used as an assessment at the conclusion of a lesson. 

This is a game for learning simple English phrases. You look at the image and then click on the words to make a matching sentence. To score points, you have to watch the ball and click the words at the exact moment the ball stops.

The aim of the game is to give students practice and exposure to simple sentences. The meaning conveyed through the images and the use of words to form sentences creates an association between the words and the meaning. To supplement this, audio is also played when the correct words are clicked. It is hoped that listening to the audio can also form an association between the sound of the words with the meaning and text.

Offset elements are words or phrases that can be removed from a sentence and not lose any meaning. Sometimes the meaning is needed, and so it is important to not use a comma in these instances.

This resource allows students the opportunity to practice comma placement with introductory elements and direct address. 

Students get to flex their writing muscles as they use a variety of writing genres to create a zine of their own: letter writing, persuasive writing, narrative, acrostic poetry, comic writing, and biography/autobiography. Each student chooses a prominent figure from popular culture as the focus for a multigenre zine and then plans the project using the Facts–Questions–Interpretations method. Students then write in each of the listed genres about their chosen subjects, using a variety of ReadWriteThink.org tools. Finally, students design covers for their projects, and the teacher binds all the printed documents into individual zines.

The teacher will present an informational text from the website, ReadWorks. The students and teacher can interact with this non-fiction text by annotating the text digitally. The students will answer the questions associated with the article as an assessment. This learning activity can be used to provide information regarding geologic events that happen over a short period of time, serve as reinforcement after students have already learned this concept, or be used as an assessment at the conclusion of a lesson. This learning activity includes a StepRead: StepReads are less complex versions of the original article. StepRead1 (SR1) is less complex than the original article, and StepRead2 (SR2) is less complex than SR1. This will allow the teacher to use this learning activity with students of varying ability levels. 

The classroom resource provides a teaching video on comparing and contrasting. The video teaches the students to compare similarities and contrast differences. This classroom resource includes worksheets to help with understanding.

This resource provides looping videos that demonstrate the writing strokes of each of the lowercase letters, including the proper approach strokes, letter formation, and line placement. The videos can be played during whole or small group instruction to demonstrate the proper approach strokes, letter formation, and line placement, while the teacher observes and provides feedback. These videos could also be used at a center rotation while students independently practice their printed handwriting strokes. 

In this lesson, the traditional autobiography writing project is given a twist as students write alphabiographies—recording an event, person, object, or feeling associated with each letter of the alphabet. Students are introduced to the idea of the alphabiography through passages from James Howe's Totally Joe. Students then work with the teacher to create guidelines for writing their own alphabiographies. Students create an entry for each letter of the alphabet, writing about an important event from their lives. After the entry for each letter, students sum up the stories and vignettes by recording the life lessons they learned from the events. Since this type of autobiography breaks out of chronological order, students can choose what has been important in their lives. And since the writing pieces are short, even reluctant writers are eager to write!

See this updated link for the online Alphabet Organizer from ReadWriteThink.org.

The teacher will present an informational text from the website, ReadWorks. The students and teacher can interact with this non-fiction text by annotating the text digitally. The students will answer the questions associated with the article as an assessment. This learning activity can be used to provide data about solid water (ice and snow) found on Earth. This activity includes a question set on cause and effect, which will help students describe the connection between scientific ideas and processes. 

In this classroom resource, students will learn about conjunctions. A conjunction is a word that joins two parts of a sentence. There are two kinds of conjunctions: coordinating conjunctions and subordinating conjunctions. This resource offers videos, games, and worksheets to help further understand the concept.

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. 

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.