1 Cooking Up Descriptive Language: Designing Restaurant Menus Resource Type: Lessons Discipline: Reading Grades: Grades 6–8 Professional Commentary: In this lesson, students explore the genre of menus by analyzing menus from local restaurants. They review adjectives and practice descriptive writing based on the language included in the menu examples.... 2 Playing Around with Poetry Resource Type: Lessons Discipline: Reading Grades: Grades 6–8 Professional Commentary: This resource provides a lesson plan for using poetry to discuss author's purpose, main idea, and use of figurative language. This instructional unit, maintained by the New Zealand Ministry of Education, allows students to read and discuss a wide selection of poetry and to write original pieces.... Resource Type: Lessons Discipline: Science, Reading Grades: Grades 6–8 Professional Commentary: This instructional unit, maintained by the New Zealand Ministry of Education, provides opportunities for students to examine the form and structure of picture books and create a narrative to be published in picture book form. Ideas for using effective layout graphic organizers support writing and the presentation of the book.... 4 Writing Free Verse in the "Voice" of Cesar Chavez Resource Type: Lessons Discipline: Reading Grades: Grades 6–8 Professional Commentary: Using biographical information about the labor activist Cesar Chavez students read several examples of free verse poems and then write a free verse poem. The procedures outlined in this lesson may be customized to study historical figures or authors that fit a teacher's curriculum.... 5 Lonely as a Cloud: Using Poetry to Understand Similes Resource Type: Lessons Discipline: Reading Grades: Grades 6–8 Professional Commentary: In this lesson, students experience the power of similes by creating two drawings of specific trees. The first is attempted before hearing a poem rich in similes describing the trees.... 6 The Poet's Voice: Langston Hughes and You Discipline: Reading Grades: Grades 6–8 Professional Commentary: This unit of seven lessons, from EDSITEment, introduces students to a poet's "voice." Students develop a general definition of voice in poetry, and analyze and appreciate the poetic voice of Langston Hughes in particular. Included are writing and discussion activities, in which students either write a poem expressing their own voice (as developed in a journal),... |