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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.

In this video, students learn how and when to use cohesive devices like determiners, pronouns, conjunctions, and adverbs. This video is perfect to help with grammar homework.

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.

Students need to practice all types of writing, and oftentimes argumentative writing is ignored in favor of persuasive writing. In fact, students may not even understand there is a difference between these two types of writing. In this lesson, students examine the differences between argumentative writing and persuasive writing. After choosing topics that interest them, students conduct research which becomes the foundation for their argumentative essays. After completing their essays, students use Piktochart to create infographics to represent their research.

In this video, students learn how special short vowels are. They learn how to write short vowel sounds and what sounds each short vowel makes. 

In this lesson, students complete two prewriting activities, one on brainstorming ideas using story maps, and one on creating the beginnings of stories. They then work on two collaborative-writing activities in which they draft an "oversized" story on chart paper. Before starting the activities, the teacher reads aloud the first few sentences from a variety of children's books that have unusual, exciting, or particularly descriptive openings. Each student works individually to read what has been written before, adds the "next sentence," and passes the developing story on to another student. The story is passed from student to student until the story is complete. In a later lesson Collaborative Stories 2: Revising, the story is revised by the groups.

Using One Leaf Rides the Wind by Celeste Davidson Mannis as an introductory text, students learn to identify elements of haiku poetry. Students go on a class hike to observe nature in their own neighborhood and collect "picturesque" words in their writer's notebooks. They explore syllable counts in their word collections and use descriptive words to compose an original haiku. Students then use print and online resources to locate facts for informational notes on the topics of their poems. Finally, students work collaboratively to publish their poetry and notes in an illustrated class book.

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 provide the background information needed for students to design a solution for cleaning a polluted environment, 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 practicing simple vocabulary words in English. You listen to the audio and then click on the correct word or image.

The aim of the game is to practice interacting with English words for simple everyday use. The images used in the game convey meaning and context. Through the interactions, this meaning is paired with text and audio to facilitate learning and reinforcement.

This lesson explores coordinating conjunctions through a short, fun video and activity. Coordinating conjunctions link two complete thoughts. For, and, nor, but, or, yet, so. A helpful hit: Remember FANBOYS.  This resource includes an activity sheet for students to practice using coordinating conjunctions. 

In this lesson, students participate in a Directed Listening-Thinking Activity (DLTA), in which they listen to "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe and answer prediction questions at designated stopping points during the reading. Students then discuss and write a written response to the story at the conclusion of the lesson, in the form of either an acrostic poem or comic strip. This lesson works well at Halloween or at the beginning of a mystery unit.

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 growth needs of plants, 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 will provide important background information before students plan and carry out their own investigation of growing plants. 

Trying to determine whether a statement is a fact or opinion just comes down to one thing: Can it be proven? The classroom resource provides an instructional video on facts and opinions. The video teaches the students to identify statements as being either a fact or an opinion. This classroom resource includes worksheets to help with understanding and encourage application.

Discover why the crucial factor that can determine whether your next workplace interaction goes well isn’t what you say, but how you listen, in this video from the Career Hacks collection. Host Camille talks with two professionals and learns what not to do in her next interview. She also learns simple things she can do to show respect to anyone she talks with and truly hear what they’re saying. This resource provides instruction and discussion on active listening skills.

In this classroom resource, students will learn how to order adjectives. It is very common to use more than one adjective before a noun in a sentence. Remember, when we use more than one adjective before a noun, we need to put them in the right order, according to their type. This resource offers videos, games, and worksheets to help further understand the concept taught in this lesson.

Validate students' out-of-school language use by asking them to share details on the use of words and phrases from movies, television shows, books, and other texts. In this activity, students compose dictionary entries for words and phrases from pop culture texts, connecting the definitions to their personal use of the terms. Their work is published individually, or if desired, collectively in a class dictionary.

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 classroom resource, students will learn how to distinguish between degrees of adjectives. There are three degrees of comparison - positive degree, comparative degree, and superlative degree. You don't need to know these terms, but you need to know how to use each in a sentence. This resource offers videos, games, and worksheets to help further understand the concept.

In this lesson, students explore adjectives through a short, fun video and activity. Adjectives modify nouns. When using more than one adjective to describe a noun, we need to make sure they are in the correct order—from general to specific.

This resource provides students with the opportunity to practice identifying correctly ordered adjectives. 

The proverb says, “You can't judge a book by its cover.” In this lesson plan, students are not judging what is inside the book, but what is on the cover itself. What does it include? Why? What is left off? Why do you think that is? After examining many book covers and dust jackets, students recreate a cover or dust jacket for a selected book; then, they share their creations with their classmates and explain the changes they made or what they chose to keep. Students use a checklist to make sure they have all of the needed components, and the teacher can use the checklist as an assessment piece.