Hyphens indicate specific nouns from compound words. Without them, they could refer to completely different things! Know when and how to use them.
"Dolphins and Porpoises" is a nonfiction text that students will read via a URL provided. Students will determine the author's purpose, which they will record on an exit ticket.
This learning activity was created as a result of the ALEX - Alabama Virtual Library (AVL) Resource Development Summit.
Students are likely to know many more words than they use in their writing. This lesson is designed to help students better use their vocabulary by teaching (or reviewing) what verbs are and to help them access verbs they already know and use them in sentences. Students work together to brainstorm and create lists of verbs for each of the letters of the alphabet. Then, choosing one verb for each letter, they create pages for an Action Alphabet book. Each page includes an illustration and a sentence using the verb in context. The project can be adapted according to age level and language ability. Students in kindergarten may work together on a class book, while older students may work in small groups or individually. Similarly, the complexity of the example sentences will vary depending on students' writing levels.
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 introduce students to the varying habitats of living things, serve as reinforcement after students have already learned this concept, or be used as an assessment at the conclusion of a lesson. This resource also provides an eBook of the article with corresponding illustrations.
In this game, students pick their game piece and spin the spinner. Read each short story carefully to determine what the author's purpose was in writing it: to entertain, inform, or persuade. If you are able to correctly determine why the short story was written, your game piece will move across the board. This classroom resource includes a video lesson and worksheet to help with understanding the concept.
In this small group activity, students will read a reader's theater fairy tale, using different voices for the characters.
This activity was created as a result of the ALEX Resource Development Summit.
Explore the difference between tone and mood in this animated video from WNET through definitions and examples from poetry and prose. Discussion questions below help students to further apply their understanding before analyzing a text.
This lesson is part of a larger unit dealing with Early American Literature. In this lesson, students will become familiar with the figurative devices and strategies used by 17th Century Puritan poets when creating closed or fixed form poetry.
This is a College- and Career-Ready Standards showcase lesson plan.
To meet the content standard of “utiliz[ing] responsible and ethical research practices,” students must first identify what these practices are. In this activity, students will be assigned a style guide or set of standards to identify responsible and ethical research practices. They will add information from their assigned source to a class slideshow so that they may have a broad range of information on responsible and ethical research practices.
Foregrounding scientific vocabulary, these integrated lesson plans invite students to research worms in order to create a classroom habitat. Students are first introduced to inquiry notebooks and then use them to record what they already know about worms. Next, students observe the cover of a fiction book about worms and make a hypothesis on whether the book is fact or fiction, and then check their hypotheses after the book is read aloud. Next, after an introduction to related scientific words such as hypothesis, habitat, attribute, predator, and prey, students conduct and record research and findings in their inquiry notebooks. Once they have gathered the necessary information, students plan and build a worm habitat, which becomes the springboard for further scientific exploration, observation, and experimentation.
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 will help explain the role of photosynthesis in cycling matter and energy into and out of organisms. The nonfiction text presents an experiment that will help explain the process of photosynthesis in an engaging, high-interest manner.
In this classroom resource, students will learn about sentence structure. A complete sentence expresses one or more ideas and consists of at least one subject and one verb. Each idea in the sentence is expressed by a clause. Each clause MUST contain a subject and a verb. This resource offers videos, games, and worksheets to help further understand the concept taught in this lesson.
This activity is a Google Slides presentation. It is intended to be completed independently. Each slide contains an excerpt from a Readworks passage. Each passage has a different text structure. The students will read each passage. Students will then respond to a text-dependent writing prompt that focuses on making inferences.
This resource was written as part of the ALEX ELA Resource Development Summit.
Students write a journal entry in which they imagine themselves as the rhinoceros and describe its journey to a new preserve.
Students will watch two video segments in order to take notes and answer questions about the relocation of the black rhinoceros to wildlife preserves across Africa. Using this background information, students will write a journal entry in which they imagine themselves as the rhinoceros and describe its journey to a new preserve.
This is a third grade English Language Arts project lesson focused on point of view using the zoo as a theme. The lesson includes a zoo field trip or virtual zoo field trip, class discussions, mini scrapbook point of view project, and a short presentation to the class. This lesson could be modified for upper or lower grade levels.
After students have defined and identified responsible and ethical research practices as well as strategies for writing clear, coherent products suitable for audience and purpose, they will utilize these practices and strategies to write their own paragraph. In this activity, students will complete the prewriting steps in this process. Using a guide, they will consider the topic, audience, purpose, and research sources as they prepare to write their paragraph.
All Quiet on the Western Front ends with a startling and ironic conclusion. Following a chapter that begins with talk of the anticipated armistice, the novel's final short paragraphs unemotionally state that Paul, the protagonist, is killed on a day army reports described as "all quiet on the western front." This ending introduces students to situational irony. After discussing the definition and several examples of situational irony, students explore the novel's concluding passage. Students next choose a possible alternate ending for the book that could still be an example of situational irony. They then retitle the book and rewrite its ending, maintaining the original ironic tone and weaving their new title into the ending as Remarque does. Finally, students design new, symbolic covers for the book, which feature their new titles.
May the force be with you as you learn about using text features (like captions, bold print, subheadings, icons, and glossaries) to find facts about the force known as gravity! A big silly walrus will travel with you through this lesson.
Adjectives give us more information about nouns (people, places, or things). We sometimes say that they "qualify" or "modify" nouns. They describe the noun or give us information about how many or how much of the noun there is. An adjective can be a single word, or you can have an adjective phrase or clause. In this classroom resource, students learn what are adjectives. This resource also offers videos, games, and worksheets to help further understand the concept taught in this lesson.
This activity provides a teacher-made Google Slides document with a link to an episode of the Smithsonian's Sidedoor Podcast called "The Worst Video Game Ever." With this high-interest topic and student-friendly format, students will practice active listening skills to answer questions about the podcast. This resource can be used in a whole group, small group, or individual setting or as at-home practice.
This activity was created as a result of the ALEX Resource Development Summit.
Students talk about what makes a good story, look at the oral tradition of storytelling, and compare and contrast stories from two different cultural traditions. In this lesson, students talk about what makes a good story, look at the oral tradition of storytelling, and watch two stories from Native Hawaiian and Alaska Native oral traditions.
Understanding and creating narratives is a fundamental literacy skill—it is also a universal human activity. When students work with written texts, recite or listen to stories, or present narratives through non-verbal means, such as art or dance, they are learning to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate their world. Teachers can build rewarding experiences for students that activate their natural love for and interest in stories. They can do this in a way that expands children's fluency and confidence with the language, as well as their respect for the rich diversity of narrative approaches and language use across cultures. As students experience narratives from different cultures, they gain perspectives on people and stories in worlds that may be unfamiliar. This will be valuable to students in many ways, for example by helping them bring a sense of perspective to their own culture and stories.
Through this lesson, students will explore primary sources related to the buying and selling of human beings for the purpose of slavery. Students will analyze receipts from stores and discuss what they demonstrate about modern society. Students will then analyze the language and iconography used in bills of sale pertaining to the buying and selling of slaves in the 19th century. The students will write a paragraph to compare and contrast the items from both eras.
This lesson was created in partnership with the Alabama Department of Archives and History.
This lesson supports the use of a text set (paired fiction and nonfiction texts on a similar topic) to increase student interest in and understanding of content area material and to develop critical writing skills. The more familiar format of narrative fiction introduces the topic and generates confidence in exploring the less familiar genre of nonfiction. Students then demonstrate what they have learned about the topic and about genre by writing an original piece that blends together narrative and expository elements.
Students will watch, listen to, and analyze Peter and the Wolf by Sergei Prokofiev. They will discuss opinions and write an opinion piece about a decision Peter made in the story. They will share their opinion with the class.
Students will read Michelle Markel's picture book, The Fantastic Jungles of Henri Rousseau. Students will discuss the main character of the book, Henri Rousseau. Students will discuss how people's reactions to his artwork have changed over time. Students will create an individual imagined jungle word list to be used as a prompt for a jungle drawing. They will elaborate on their individual imagined jungle word list by creating a jungle drawing that contains a subject and background.
This activity was created as a result of the Arts COS Resource Development Summit.
The teacher will present the homograph video for the students to watch. After viewing, students and the teacher will discuss other possible homographs they have heard before. Students will then collaborate to complete the ABCs of Homographs sheet. Students will then complete a homographs crossword puzzle independently.
This activity was created as a result of the ALEX Resource Development Summit.
In this short practice, students review common kinds of mistakes to watch for when proofreading their writing, watch a video of employees in varying fields explain why proofreading is important in their jobs, and practice finding errors in an order for spring dance posters.
Students will read from an Alabama newspaper about President James Monroe's surprise visit to Huntsville. The article discusses the purposes of the visit, the locals who welcomed and entertained the President, and his discussion of current (1819) events.
This lesson was created in partnership with the Alabama Department of Archives and History.
Students will learn persuasive techniques used in advertising, specifically, pathos or emotion, logos or logic, and ethos or credibility/character. They will use this knowledge to analyze advertising in a variety of sources: print, television, and Web-based advertising. Students will also explore the concepts of demographics and marketing for a specific audience. The unit will culminate in the production of an advertisement in one of several various forms of media, intended for a specific demographic.
The updated link for the Comic Creator resource is https://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/student-interactives/comic-creator.
The updated link for the Printing Press resource is https://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/student-interactives/printing-press.
Can you read the three-letter (CVC) words on these animated word machines? Students can choose between short a, short i, short e, short o, and short u.
Before reading Kate Chopin's The Story of an Hour, students practice annotating song lyrics that echo the short story's theme regarding gender inequality. Annotation is an effective way of having student engage with a text for close reading. By having students annotate song lyrics first, the task seems less daunting or overwhelming to students. Also, the pop culture aspect peaks student interest and makes the literature more relevant as students discover that contemporary songs and classic literature share common, universal themes.
This activity results from the ALEX Resource Gap Project.
This learning activity is an engaging teacher-created Google Slides presentation with basic definitions of literary terms illustrated with examples (gifs and videos) featuring a student favorite, Spongebob Squarepants. This activity includes a link to a Quizlet flashcard set.
This activity was created as a result of the ALEX Resource Development Summit.
This lesson may be taught as part of the Unit Plan - Solutions to Lessen Human Impact on the Environment. In this lesson, students will participate in creating a recycle drive for a classroom project. Students will create the notification for parents for the recycle drive to help collect items to be recycled. Students will decide by voting on which items they will recycle. Students will bring recyclable items to the classroom for the project. Recyclable materials will be sorted, weighed, and graphed to compare the different items.
This unit was created as part of the ALEX Interdisciplinary Resource Development Summit.
"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.
When reading, we all encounter unknown words at times. But how do we figure them out? In this lesson, students learn how to become a “human dictionary” by using a variety of strategies to figure out the meaning of unknown words. Students will be able to figure out the meaning of unknown words using various strategies and clues.
This lesson also offers a pre-lesson to help EL students.
