Foster reader confidence when encountering complex text and reinforce the skills readers have acquired to build and extend their understanding of text. The plan uses a section of Douglass’ narrative as an exemplar text. Directions for...

Learners practice sentence combining at increasingly difficult levels throughout a week. They begin with nouns and verbs and build to contrasts, parallels, etc. 

Demonstrate strategies for tackling unfamiliar vocabulary words in preparation for the SAT. Using Visual Thesaurus computer software, middle and high schoolers interpret contextual clues, solve sample sentence completion questions, and...

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...

Who was Vincent van Gogh? Most of the questions can be answered in two or three sentences; however, there is at least one essay prompt and one personal response question that require longer answers. Questions call for a good mix of...

Work on sentence fragments with your class using this handout and brief exercise. This resource, which could be used as a reference sheet for learners, goes into detail about complete sentences and the different errors that cause...

Build your class's dictionary skills with this fun game. The activity allows learners to better understand dictionary usage, spelling, and vocabulary. By the end of this activity, they should be skilled word finders.

Play with words and word meanings involving the suffix -er. After reading a sample list of words, young readers look up each one in the dictionary to decide which words refer to people, animals, or objects, or have three or more...

What's happening in this poem? Have your high schoolers participate in an activity about connotation and denotation. They apply the concept of connotation to a reading of Theodore Roethke's poem "My Papa's Waltz." Lead a discussion about...

Explore the pop art movement and create a sculpture in the pop art style based on a visual pun, or play on words. The scholar's work may use humor, allegory, metaphor, or be in the form of a parody. Visual examples are provided, and some...

Learners utilize various vocabulary strategies. They use vocabulary logs to record strategies they have been taught, such as the Frayer Model (definition, picture, examples, non-examples), writing their own definitions, and using...

As a way to understand Memorial Day, build citizenship, practice vocabulary, and discuss current international conflicts, learners create their own Memorial Day. They design their own memorial after learning about the various types of...

Are you actually feeling really tired of reading wordy, redundant, long, lengthy sentences practically all the time over and over again? Introduce writers to this handout and exercise to teach to tighten up their prose! Provides two ways...

Improve syntax with this explanatory handout. It clarifies one way to make writing more precise: avoiding nominalization. This resource provides four ways to find and change nominalization problems and 10 sentences to correct. There are...

Have you ever studied historical words and found that they were deeply rooted in racism or prejudice? Select a long list of these words to have your class examine. What familiar roots do they have? Do they know when this word originally...