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Is it possible to make a bad picture into a good picture with photo editing? When scientists enhance pictures from telescopes, are they really doing science, or are they just indulging their imaginations? Just how far can you zoom in to get information? When you're manipulating images, you have to be able to separate usable information from background noise.

This article will explain how photo editing software uses trigonometric identities and substitution to adjust the value of pixels in an image. There is a corresponding video and links to additional information.

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.

In this activity, while students are talking in "Robot Talk," students hear segmented sounds and put them together (blend them) into words.

Getting to the final draft takes a keen editorial eye and skillful editing. This demonstrative video uses a highlighting strategy that will help ensure that your rough draft encompasses the important parts.

This resource provides students with the opportunity to edit a sample essay for clarity and coherence.

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.

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

This ocean-themed unit will focus students' attention on alliteration, or repeated beginning word sounds. Students begin by reading the book Look Who Lives in the Ocean by Allen Baker, and then sharing what they notice about the words in the story. Then they work as a class to craft a definition of alliteration and record the definition on chart paper. Students continue to expand their knowledge of alliteration by finding examples in classroom books and their own writing and then adding these examples to a class list. Next, they practice revising sentences to include alliteration and then share their revisions with the class. Finally, students compose their own class book to explore the technique in their own writing. The lesson is a natural extension after alphabet books have been introduced, when writing a class book, or to supplement independent writing projects.

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 explain how the sun illuminates the moon at night, serve as reinforcement after students have already learned this concept, or be used as an assessment at the conclusion of a lesson.

Beach Jeep is an ELA game that offers a choice of skills to work on. Students can drive their jeep along the beach while trying to find signs with the correct plural noun ending, adjective, adverb, or irregular verb. The jeep even comes with a few crazy devices such as the beach ball cannon and punching boxer's glove. Look out for crabs and pirates. They're everywhere!

Prepositions indicate the location of a thing to another thing across time or space. Prepositional phrases contain a preposition and its object.

This resource allows students to practice identifying prepositional phrases. 

As students study the theme of community, they collect vocabulary words and key concepts. Students first talk about their community and then craft a definition of community. Students then examine several examples of the alphabet book genre and a variety of print and online texts. With the information they've found, students create alphabet books—individually, in small groups, or as a whole class—using an online tool. Their books relate each letter of the alphabet with a fact, keyword or phrase from their research, providing both an artifact that can be used to teach others about the subject and a demonstration of the knowledge gained in the unit that can be used for assessment. This unit focuses on the theme of community, but the idea can be adapted for any unit of study.