Explore figurative language with your secondary class. Extending a language arts unit, the lesson prompts middle schoolers to examine how an author's word choice establishes a story's tone, possibly using metaphors, similes,...

First graders examine the culture of the ancient Gullah people. As a class, they practice saying and writing the days of the week and numbers in Gullah. They are read a Gullah folktale and put the events of the story into the correct...

Tenth graders define the term slang, explaining its various social, historical, and racial contexts, so as to articulate when it can be appropriately used as a means of effective communication. They use their own personal slang lexicon,...

Are you teaching a high school language arts class and stumped for writing topics? Five pages of writing prompts for all kinds of writing should help you out. Many of these prompts refer to texts that are not included in this resource,...

Students practice experiencing writing with appropriate language and incorporating the eight parts of speech. They assess that many words have multiple functions when used in different contexts. Each student free writes in response to a...

Reward your class with tasty treats while teaching them about simile and metaphor. After a teacher demo and explanation of simile and metaphor, pupils read books, looking for examples of these literary devices and copying them down....

Students develop a definition of the role/function of adverbs. Specifically students articulate that adverbs modify verbs by telling how something is done, when something is done, where something is done, or modify adverbs or adjectives.

Students compare the differences between bilingualism and registers of discourse. They investigate how economic, historical and interpersonal relationships affect language and relationships.

Students explore Civil Rights by reading several books in class. In this Underground Railroad lesson, students discuss The Story of Henry Box Brown and identify the location and functionality of the Underground Railroad. Students answer...

Here is a good way to use newspapers in the classroom and build a functional vocabulary. Learners are given 26 cards, they write one letter of the alphabet on each. They search the paper to find a name, place, or word for each letter,...

Second graders examine the skills they need to have in order to function successfully in a family unit. They look at how families are different from one another and at the dynamics that exist in the families in this unit of lessons.

Students develop their knowledge of HTML. They use an HTML template to analyze the function of basic HTML elements and develop web pages for the school web site. II. use the HTML editor HTML Assistant to develop web pages for the school...

Students review their understanding of basic computer terminology. They demonstrate an understanding of the function of each major computer component. They identify some characteristics of the Windows operating system.

Ninth graders brainstorm the economic and social functions of a family. In groups, they research the roles of each member of a family in the past and compare it with their family today. In groups, they develop criteria for what the...

"The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson is a great story to share with your class, and this lesson focuses on just that story! The eighth in a fourteen-lesson series on short stories, the plan has learners study some vocabulary, read the...

Students explore choreographic narrative. For this choreography lesson, students explore the elements of Appalachian Spring as they develop a series of written responses to assignments that challenge them to investigate the structure of...

Review the terms denotation, connotation, diction, and mood in paragraph writing. After defining the terms, middle schoolers practice writing examples of both connotation and denotation. They complete a connotation and denotation...

Students read and analyze the novel, Maniac McGee. They answer discussion questions, read the short story "Thank You, M'am," by Langston Hughes, and conduct Internet research on genealogical websites to analyze their first and last names.

A video leads off this activity on fables, introducing the class to this important form of traditional storytelling. The group defines fable and hears an explanation of the origin of this type of folk tale. They summarize the story they...

Use websites to read stories about heroes. The "My Hero" website provides skills and reading materials to help your class analyze sequence and story parts. They put the events in order to show the correct sequence of events.

Learners role play as Marco Polo to detail his travels. They include the terrains, foods, religions, people and cultures that were encountered. They write a journal entry as if they were Marco Polo detailing one aspect of his travels.

Students consider toys as more than items for playing, compare and contrast inventors and toys they created, and discuss purpose of specific toys, including whether toy was created for education, financial success, or both.

This detailed overview of a curriculum unit suggests using travel literature to engage and stimulate your third graders’ interest in reading. The suggested reading list includes fiction and non-fiction materials and offers urban children...

What's the best resource to use when looking up words? Use Visual Thesaurus to see a word's meaning. The class accesses the interactive website and then compares and contrasts the difference between using a traditional dictionary and the...