Learning Activities

After learning about types of audio sources and defining credible and useful, students will listen to audio sources for the purpose of gathering useful information. The teacher will play two audio sources for the students. Students will assess the credibility and usefulness of these sources and participate in a listening, note-taking, and written position statement activity.

This activity provides resources meant to engage and inform students about the importance of teamwork in everyday life as well as academic life. Students will be shown a short video to spark a discussion about the benefits of working collaboratively with fellow peers to accomplish a goal. Students will communicate key ideas from their discussion using a digital tool selected by the teacher.

The teacher will show a video to introduce students to first-person and third-person points of view. The video will help students identify what perspective a story is being told using the help of pronouns.  Then the students will identify first-person and third-person narration with the help of pronouns in two similar stories and record them on a point of view T-Chart. An anchor chart is included with this activity. 

This activity was created as a result of the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

This activity is the follow-up to the Pre-Test. It serves to introduce or refresh students about the steps in the writing process before writing an essay. This is a post-test to see what the students know before writing an essay. It gives the definitions of the seven steps and can be used to study throughout the course of the year.

This resource was created in partnership with Dothan City Schools.

In this activity, the student will evaluate the author's rhetorical style in two paragraphs to interpret the author's intended answer to the final question of the text:  Which came out of the door, the lady, or the tiger? Students will work in groups to complete t-charts and discussion questions to interpret the character's reaction to two scenarios stated in the text.

This activity results from the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

Knowing students learn most effectively when relevant and authentic learning opportunities such as field trips are provided, this activity challenges students to research introductory information as assigned to produce a virtual museum. Students will work collaboratively to produce such and will present to their peers in order for all students to “travel” to each other’s museums. This activity allows students to take ownership of their learning by determining the significant details of their assigned topic.  

This resource was created as a part of the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

The Oreo Method of writing an argument essay helps students to develop an argument using textual evidence and commentary to support a claim.  This method also allows the student to develop a pattern for creating clear, vivid and precise writing.  This Learning Activity would be for any non-fiction text.

This activity results from the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

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 activity serves as an introduction to the life cycle of a plant. The video will provide a visual to engage students in expanding their background knowledge and building vocabulary acquisition. After the video, the teacher will utilize a Jamboard to lead a discussion of the following words: germinate, photosynthesis, and pollinate. The students will create a definition based on the context of the word in the video, their background knowledge, and the word's structure including prefixes, root words, and suffixes.

This learning activity was created as a result of the ALEX - Alabama Virtual Library (AVL) Resource Development Summit.

In the previous learning activity, students had to discern biographical information from a picture book based on the life of Senator John Lewis. In this part of the lesson, students are going to continue learning about the senator by conducting research using Gale in Context: Elementary Edition. They will demonstrate their comprehension by utilizing the content of the informational text to complete a biographical map of the senator.

This learning activity was created as a result of the ALEX - Alabama Virtual Library (AVL) Resource Development Summit.

The teacher will use a YouTube video to help students understand text features as it will explain each one. After each text feature is explained, the teacher will ask a follow-up question to determine if the students are comprehending the new information. The students will then play a game to interactively identify text features through the game.

This activity was created as a result of the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

Students will show comprehension of key vocabulary by playing a digital learning game on Gimkit. This is a review of the 11 vocabulary terms from Welcome to the Underworld in a paired reading with Chapter 18 of The Lightning Thief. 

This resource was created in partnership with Dothan City Schools.

In this activity, students will use their knowledge of imagery and point of view to analyze a piece of short fiction and how the author uses those literary devices to convey meaning as a whole.

This activity results from the ALEX Resource Development Summit. 

In this activity, students will be taught how to recognize figurative language (similes & metaphors) in poems/poetry and give an explanation for the meaning of metaphors and similes used in poems/poetry.

This activity was created as a result of the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

This lesson activity focuses on Civil Rights movements in 1963 and should be used as a discussion topic for collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) in English Language Arts. The students will watch the video, PBS-The Children's March, followed by a collaborative discussion with diverse partners in which students will clearly and persuasively express their ideas about the video. This activity involves the use of cell phones, but a lesson variation is available.

This activity was created as a part of the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

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 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.

Students will read an article on Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream.The class will discuss the message Edvard Munch was trying to convey. The students will then be given an emotion to portray in a painting or sketch. The class will discuss which emotion each work of art conveys.

This activity was created as a result of the Arts COS Resource Development Summit.

Students will use a piece of visual art to write original dialogue.

This activity was created as a result of the Arts COS Resource Development Summit.

Students will be introduced to the basics of coding following a picture book read-aloud. After reading “Chrysanthemum” by Kevin Henkes, the teacher will lead a discussion with the students about the uniqueness of everyone’s names and how code is also a unique set of instructions. This will prepare students to construct their own unique codes in collaboration with their peers.

This learning activity was created as a result of the ALEX - Alabama Virtual Library (AVL) Resource Development Summit.

"Be an Inventor" is an interactive slideshow that students will use to read and determine the author's purpose for writing in various informational texts. Students will use text features, such as timelines and highlighting, to cite evidence to explain the author's perspective towards the topic. 

This learning activity was created as result of the ALEX-Alabama Virtual Library (AVL) Resource Development Summit. 

This learning activity includes a prefix, root word, and suffix randomizer wheel created on Flippity. The teacher will share this resource with the students. Students will spin the wheel to create new words. Each word will have a prefix and suffix added to the root word. Many of the words will not make sense and that is why this activity is so fun! 

This resource was created as part of the ALEX Resource Development Summit. 

In this “During” activity, students, with their vocabulary chapter-walk knowledge, will jump into comprehending additional text aspects, including literary elements and structure. Students can use their Master Vocabulary List to complete vocabulary checks within the reading, and also before reading as a whole class activity. Students can first complete the vocabulary “search” within their chapters to locate the exact sentence the word is used in. In this specific activity, students and the teacher will go a step further and dive into a text. The skills being used to become close with the text considers text structure (comparing and contrasting), summarizing (finding the GIST through listing), and skimming for keywords after reading the text to quickly find an answer to a comprehension question.

This learning activity was created as a result of the Struggling Readers Initiative Resource Development Project, in partnership with Dothan City Schools.

Resources include: 

1. YouTube Videos: Pixar Animated Shorts to use with the students. The animated shorts tell a story focusing on the elements of plot (characters, setting, conflict, rising actions, climax, falling actions, and resolution).

2. Plot Diagram 

Students will watch a Pixar Short video and complete the attached plot diagram that focuses on characters, setting, conflict, rising actions, climax, falling actions, and resolution. Students will demonstrate their understanding of the plot in the video by completing the attached plot diagram.

Students will summarize the Pixar Short video story, describing how the plot unfolds, and how the characters respond to challenges/problems using visual evidence.

This activity results from the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

In this whole group activity, students will write their own fractured fairy tale versions, told from the point of view of the villain.

This resource was created as a part of the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

The students will conduct research about an individual who served in the Vietnam War from their hometown or a city in Alabama. Using this information, the students will construct a memorial to their serviceman in Google Drawings. This activity will allow this time period to become relevant to students by asking them to research those geographically close to them. This activity serves as a beginning engagement tool to hook students in either the reading of The Things They Carried or a historic look at The Vietnam War.  

This activity is a result of the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

After learning to use database advanced tools with teacher support, students will repeat the process with a topic of their choice. Students will apply knowledge of advanced search tools such as term, field, Boolean operators, wildcards, and search limiters. Students will note how the search results change when additional search tools are employed and various research strategies are used.

With the help of the school librarian, students will use a library database and search filters to locate a graphic text on a teacher-approved topic. They will engage with the graphic text in order to analyze and evaluate the information. Finally, they will record and share their analysis responses and textual evidence with the teacher using a digital document.

This lesson will assist teachers in guiding students through identifying direct and indirect characterization, as well as, analyzing how dialogue and characters' actions contribute to the meaning of the text.

This activity results from the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

Students will watch a short YouTube video on how to use homographs in text. They will then choose three homographs to use in a short story. Students will use those homographs to write a story and then record their story using Flipgrid. Students will then watch two other students' videos to complete the homograph story evaluation sheet attached. 

This activity was created as a result of the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

This resource provides instruction and graphic organizers for the Prewriting, Drafting, Revising, Editing, and Proofreading stages of the writing process. The resource is designed to facilitate creating an expository essay. The purpose of the essay will be to explain a problem and present solutions. Students will need to research to gather support for their proposed solutions. 

This activity was created as a result of the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

Students will engage in collaborative discussions as they compare and contrast the short story and film version of “Rikki Tikki Tavi” by completing before, during, and after viewing activities.

This activity was created as a result of the ALEX Resource Development Summit. 

Thinglink is a digital resource that provides click-and-learn tags within images and video to enhance learning and take it beyond the textbook or classroom walls!

Students can use this specific Thinglink as a digital source to meet the Alabama Course of Study standards for gathering and recalling relevant information, paraphrasing and creating grammatically correct content, and giving proper credit to digital sources. 

This activity is a result of the ALEX Resource Development Summit.

In this learning activity, students will focus on a rhetorical analysis of visual texts to determine an author's purpose and message. First, students will view a video on how to analyze political or editorial cartoons. By identifying and analyzing labels, symbols, exaggeration, irony, analogy, and argument, students will be able to infer the artist's/author's intended message of the editorial cartoon. Then, students will practice analyzing other cartoons with the same process utilizing the tech tool Flipgrid. (from Common Sense Education:  Flipgrid is a website that allows teachers to create "grids" of short discussion-style questions that students respond to through recorded videos. Each grid is effectively a message board where teachers can pose a question and their students can post 90-second video responses that appear in a tiled "grid" display.)

This activity results from the ALEX Resource Gap Project.

Prior to this activity, students will have defined and identified responsible and ethical research practices. In this activity, students will use information gathered from web research to contribute to a class checklist used to ensure students use responsible and ethical practices when writing. The teacher may choose to add to this checklist using subsequent lessons related to this standard.