Viewing and Writing about Photos from Around the World Preliminary Activity: Direct students to a website similar to 24 Hours in Pictures . Let them explore the most recent photos, choose three of their favorites and write one sentence response/reaction to those three. They can copy and paste the photo onto a Word document [...]
April 22 is Earth Day as proclaimed by the United Nations in 2009. Here’s an English Language Arts activity you can incorporate into your lessons that will raise awareness of some of the issues important to humankind and especially to Michael Jackson as expressed in his “Earth Song“. Focusing on lyrics fits in nicely with [...]
Spend some time reading poetry and deciding which poem you like well enough to share with the class. (Please select a new poem; one not done for previous assignments or projects). Steps to Selection 1. Select a collection of poems (a collection by the same or by different authors). See our class anthology, Poems 180, [...]
Propaganda, Persuasion and Play-writing Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee Adapted from McDougal Littell Conversation: Lessons of History Includes links to Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts Download Inherit the Wind Lessons Though based on the famous Scopes “Monkey Trail” where William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow clashed over a [...]
Teri Le Sage designed this project to accompany her students’ study of “A LONG WAY GONE: MEMOIRS OF A BOY SOLDIER, Ishmael Beah tells his experience as a child soldier from Sierra Leone”, and Elie Wiesel’s memoir NIGHT, about” a scholarly, pious teenager is wracked with guilt at having survived the horror of the Holocaust [...]
Do you find it tough trying to get yours students to be more precise and use just the right word to express their observations about the author’s tone in piece of writing , director’s tone in film, or the student’s personal response to that work? Here’s a list of terms my students found helpful. I’ve [...]
While the Nine Yardsticks of Value originally were written for use in evaluating fictional works, they can be adapted for deeper reading of more kinds of writing. Take a look, then download Responding to Reading for use in your classroom to aid students in reaching Common Core Standards in reading, writing, and discussing published works. [...]
Do hope your school year is coming along well. With the end of the year coming, many educators find schedules disrupted by athletic games and artistic events that draw students’ attention away from day to day class activities. Don’t fight it. Roll with it. Invite students to write about their experiences in connection to the [...]
Looking for an outstanding professional development opportunity? Then the annual conventions of the National Council of Teachers of English and the Conference on English Leadership are for you! Boston, MA is the setting for the 2013 Conventions. See info at NCTE.ORG (November 14-17) and NCTE.ORG/CEL (November 17-19) The following are links to handouts from my [...]
We know that getting off to a good start makes all the difference in the world. Why not consider some of these ideas for kicking off your next unit of study or the next book you plan to teach. With careful planning, gathering resources, and scheduling use of technology, you and your students can have [...]
