1 Audience, Purpose, and Language Use in Electronic Messages Resource Type: Lessons Discipline: Reading Grades: Grades 6–8 Professional Commentary: With the increasing popularity of e-mail and online instant messaging among teens, a recognizable change has occurred in the language that students use in their writing. This lesson explores the language of electronic messages and how it affects academic writing and more formal communication.... 2 Spend a Day in My Shoes: Exploring the Role of Perspective in Narrative Resource Type: Lessons Discipline: Reading Grades: Grades 8–10 Professional Commentary: In To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus explains to Scout that "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view...until you climb into his skin and walk around in it" (36). Using this quotation as a springboard, students explore writers' use of point of view and draft original stories from someone... 3 Knowing Write from Wrong: Exploring Common Writing Errors in the Electronic Communications Age Resource Type: Lessons Discipline: Reading Grades: Grades 9–10 Professional Commentary: In this lesson, students explore how the informality of electronic correspondence has affected communications in the workplace. After responding to a prompt written for two different audiences, students work collaboratively to a writing guide that contains rules and examples to help correct common informal English writing errors.... Resource Type: Lessons Discipline: Reading Grades: Grades 6–10 Professional Commentary: This lesson prompts students to consider the appropriateness of different writing styles based on purpose and audience. Students begin by discussing the influence text messaging has had on academic writing.... 5 Build it Up, Trim it Down Resource Type: Lessons Discipline: Reading Grades: Grades 8–10 Professional Commentary: This lesson uses a sports writing context for students to practice key reading and writing process skills. Presented with data and highlights about a sporting event, students synthesize the information and write original sports summaries.... Resource Type: Lessons Discipline: Reading Grades: Grades 8–10 Professional Commentary: The aim of this lesson is to help students develop their persuasive writing and information gathering skills using various forms of information and communication technology. Using the context of issues common to teenagers, this lesson provides an authentic and personally relevant purpose.... 7 Ghosts and Fear in Language Arts: Exploring the Ways Writers Scare Readers Resource Type: Lessons Discipline: Reading Grades: Grades 9–10 Professional Commentary: What is scary, and why does it fascinate us? How do writers and storytellers scare us?... 8 Weaving the Multigenre Web Resource Type: Lessons Discipline: Reading Grades: Grades 8–10 Professional Commentary: This lesson combines reading and writing as students work through collaborative, small-group learning experiences. In small groups, students read novels as part of a whole class study, in literature circles, with a partner or individually.... 9 Many Years Later: Responding to Gwendolyn Brooks’ “We Real Cool” Resource Type: Lessons Discipline: Reading Grades: Grades 9–10 Professional Commentary: In this lesson, students analyze the poetic devices and literary features of Gwendolyn Brooks’ “We Real Cool” and then imagine themselves as one of the characters in the poem many years in the future. Using online resources, students explore the poem’s rhythm and rhyme as well as how one reader has seen himself in Brooks’ poetry.... Resource Type: Lessons Discipline: Reading Grades: Grades 6–10 Professional Commentary: In this lesson, students explore several radio news formats, styles, and sequences, and then write segments for a student-centered news radio program. After reading an article about news radio programming in Afghanistan, students plan and present a radio news show.... |