1 Leading to Great Places in the Middle School Classroom Resource Type: Lessons Discipline: Reading Grades: Grades 6–8 Professional Commentary: The lead of a story is the beginning, and yet it can be the end if the reader is not engaged in the writing. This lesson examines examples of leads in young adult literature such as setting, action, character, reflection, event, and dialogue in a shared reading experience.... 2 Writing an Original Fable: How are fables written? Resource Type: Lessons Discipline: Reading Grades: Grades 4–6 Professional Commentary: In this lesson, students explore the elements of fables. Links are provided to websites featuring wide collections of fables.... 3 She Did What? Revising for Connotation Resource Type: Lessons Discipline: Reading Grades: Grades 6–8 Professional Commentary: Did she walk, skip, amble, dance? In this mini-lesson, students examine the simple sentence "She walked into the room." Students act out ways that the student in the sentence might enter the room, revising the sample sentence to increase the specificity of the word and explore connotation.... 4 Writing Folktales: Identifying and Using Elements of Folktales and Tall Tales Resource Type: Lessons Discipline: Reading Grades: Grades 4–6 Professional Commentary: In this lesson, students explore the common elements of various types of folktales (e.g. tall tales, fairy tales, animal tales).... 5 Can You Convince Me? : Developing Persuasive Writing Resource Type: Lessons Discipline: Reading Grades: Grades 6–8 Professional Commentary: Persuasive writing is an important skill, but writing an argument can seem intimidating to elementary students. This lesson introduces persuasive writing techniques through a variety of engaging, interactive activities.... 6 History Comes Alive: Improve Fluency and Comprehension Using Social Studies Discipline: Reading Grades: Grades 2–5 Professional Commentary: This cross-curricular lesson combines Social Studies and Language Arts to demonstrate how the study of an historical topic can be developed to make learning nonfiction more exciting, and also improve fluency and comprehension. This project about Benjamin Franklin includes a series of lessons in which the students: 1) read for information from multiple texts, 2) write a script for a Readers Theater... |