By looking at advertising and mass media critically, students begin to understand how the media oppresses certain groups, convinces people to purchase certain products, and influences culture.
Students use the elements of persuasion for a specific audience to demonstrate their understanding of Richard Wright's accessible and engaging coming-of-age novel, "Rite of Passage.
Students write descriptions of characters, incorporate new vocabulary words, practice using simile and metaphor, engage in peer editing, and post their revised descriptions on the walls for a matching game.
Lights, camera, action, and a bit of mystery! In this lesson, students use mystery props in a skit bag to create and perform in short, impromptu skits.
This online tool enables students to learn about and write diamante poems.
Striking images can leave lasting impressions on viewers. In this lesson, students make text-self-world connections to a nature- or science-related topic as they collaboratively design a multimedia presentation.
Learn about Greek gods, heroes, and creatures through digital storytelling produced by students who have learned research techniques.
Students learn about memory by doing a memory-writing exercise, studying the brain to understand how it affects memory, reading Li-Young Lee's poem "Mnemonic," and creating projects to demonstrate their understanding.
Doodle Splash combines the process of drawing with analytical thinking by pairing online drawing with writing prompts that encourage students to make connections between their visual designs and the text.
Students keep a doodle journal while reading short stories by a common author. In small groups, students then combine their doodles into a graphic representation of the text.
Students create math stories by first drawing, then writing, and finally using math symbols to show addition or subtraction.
An Observation and Inquiry Sheet guides students as they analyze and compare their reactions to the value, engagement, and credibility of three websites related to Anne Frank and the Holocaust.
Students research engineering careers and create poetry to understand the vocabulary of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics).
With e-pals, students develop real-life writing and social experiences, learn the format of a friendly letter and parts of an e-mail message, and discover other cultures, languages, and geographic areas.
Pairs of students respond to literature alternately in shared journals. Mini-lessons are presented on responding to prompts, creating dialogue, adding drawings, and asking and answering questions.
Students use art and poetry to explore and understand major characteristics of the Romantic period.
Students explore the nature and structure of expository texts that focusing on cause and effect and apply what they learned using graphic organizers and writing paragraphs to outline cause-and-effect relationships.
The activity includes a series of exercises, in which students view the literal representations of idioms and then examine the metaphorical meanings of the idioms.
Fact Fragment Frenzy provides elementary students with an online model for finding facts in nonfiction text, then invites students to find facts in five sample passages.
Using various reading strategies and resources, students explore the issue of food waste. They also create persuasive arguments and blog posts examining this topic.