In this lesson you will learn how to analyze key events in an article by creating a timeline.
In this lesson you will learn how to analyze a text's structure by examining how one sections fits with the others.
In this lesson you will learn how to determine the meaning of the author's words by comparing denotative and connotative meanings.
In this lesson you will learn how to make a valid inference by analyzing parts of a text
In this lesson you will learn how to determine the central idea of a text by analyzing the subject's accomplishments.
In this lesson you will learn how to evaluate an argument by examining the support provided in the text.
A compilation of lessons from AFT and TES
This summer, I'm exploring a variety of Web sites and tools that you can use in the classroom and/or for your own professional development. Each week, I'll talk about how it works, point out related sites, and discuss classroom connections. This week, I focus on a variety of online resources for mind mapping.
Download the plug-in tools you need to use our games and tools, or check to see if you've got the latest version. Looking for ways to engage your students in online literacy learning? Find more interactive tools that help them accomplish a variety of goals-from organizing their thoughts to learning about language.
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.
The Webbing Tool provides a free-form graphic organizer for activities that ask students to pursue hypertextual thinking and writing.
ABOUT THIS INTERACTIVE The Bio Cube interactive has been changed to a new format: the Cube Creator. Summarizing information is an important postreading and prewriting activity that helps students synthesize what they have learned.
Critical Perspectives: Reading and Writing About Slavery Students critically explore the moral issue of slavery through reading fiction and nonfiction children's literature about the Underground Railroad, and they extend their understanding through creative writing projects.
ABOUT THIS INTERACTIVE Timeline allows students to create a graphical representation of an event or process by displaying items sequentially along a line. Timelines can be organized by time of day, date, or event, and the tool allows users to create a label with short or long descriptive text.
This interactive tool allows students to create Venn diagrams that contain two or three overlapping circles. Students identify and record concepts that can be placed in one of the circles or in the overlapping areas, allowing them to organize their information logically. Students may view and edit their draft diagrams, then print the finished diagrams for reference.
This interactive tool allows students to create Venn Diagrams that contain three overlapping circles, enabling them to organize their information logically.
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Students read and analyze the advice given in Mary Schmich's 1997 Chicago Tribune column "Advice, Like Youth, Probably Just Wasted on the Young," which inspired the popular recording "Everybody’s Free (to Wear Sunscreen)" by Baz Luhrmann. Exploring the column and its recording, students focus on both content and style through the following central questions: What advice is being given? To whom is it given? How good is this advice? Using similar analytical techniques, students then explore the advice that Polonius gives to Laertes in Shakespeare's Hamlet. Based on this exploration, students write their own advice poems as a final activity.
Set the stage for high-interest reading with a purpose through a biography project. Students work together to generate questions they would like to answer about several well-known people, then each student chooses one of these and finds information by reading a biography from the library and doing Internet research. Students create a graphic organizer (a web) to organize the facts they have found and share what they have learned about their subjects through oral presentations. Students evaluate themselves and their classmates by using a rubric during the research and graphic organizer-creation process and by giving written feedback on one another's presentations.
Grades 6 - 8 Lesson Plan Type Unit Estimated Time Six 50-minute sessions Lesson Author Publisher Featured Resources From Theory to Practice OVERVIEW Students work in groups to read and discuss a book, keeping track of their feelings and opinions about the book, as well as facts and quotations, as they read.
Who owns what you compose? Who controls what happens with the words, images, music, sounds, videos that you create? What rights do you have to use other people’s compositions? This unit plan focuses on helping students find answers to these questions. Students explore a range of resources on fair use and copyright then design their own audio public service announcements (PSAs), to be broadcast over the school’s public address system. Students begin by completing a survey about fair use. Students discuss their responses to the survey and then research facts about fair use and copyright. Next, students become familiar with PSAs before writing and producing their own announcements, which are shared with other students. Work can also be published as podcasts on the Internet.
Students become familiar with the similarities and differences between electronic and printed text by comparing the textual aids included in a textbook with those of an educational website.
In this lesson, students are encouraged to explore the idea of memory in both large- and small-group settings. Students access their own life experiences and then discuss family stories they have heard. After choosing a family member to interview, students create questions, interview their relative, and write a personal narrative that describes not only the answers to their questions but their own reactions to these responses. These narratives are peer reviewed and can be published as a class magazine or a website.
This lesson uses Jane Addams Award-winning books to explore author's voice and style. The Jane Addams Book Awards are given to children's books that effectively promote the cause of peace, social justice, world community, and the equality of the sexes and all races. After reading and examining The Yellow Star: The Legend of King Christian X of Denmark by Carmen Agra Deedy, a Jane Addams Honor Book in 2001, students choose another Jane Addams Award-winning book for personal investigation of author's voice. This lesson is designed for students in grades 6 to 8, but can be adapted for other grade bands as well.
