Students use themed graphic organizers to compose cinquain poems on topics common in the early elementary classroom.
Reinforce student understanding of parts of speech through the analysis of sample cinquain poems followed by the creation of original cinquains.
Students view examples of blogs, learn the basic elements of blog creation, and then create a blog from the perspective of a fictional character.
Students create poetry collections with the theme of ńgetting to know each other.î They study and then write a variety of forms of poetry to include in their collections.
Students are exposed to wordless picture books and begin developing story lines, both orally and in writing, using an online, interactive story map.
Students practice writing detailed, sensory-rich descriptions by framing a small piece of nature and freewriting about it. From this minilesson, students can develop a variety of types of writing.
Students explore the idea of crossing boundaries through bilingual, spoken-word poetry, culminating in a poetry slam at school or in the community.
Students rework their forgotten/abandoned drafts by cutting and covering up selected words. By creatively manipulating text, they explore portal writing, a strategy for envisioning a new story or story direction.
Students learn about personification by reading and discussing poems and then brainstorm nouns and verbs to create personification in their own poems.
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.
Students read Raymond Carver's story "A Small, Good Thing," focusing on characterization in order to develop one of the static characters: the hit-and-run driver who causes ScottyŐs death: more fully.
This online tool enables students to learn about and write diamante poems.
What's that sound? Students participate in a Directed Listening-Thinking Activity (DLTA) using "The Tell-Tale Heart," make predictions, and respond in the form of an acrostic poem or comic strip.
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 ńMnemonic,î and creating projects to demonstrate their understanding.
Boom! Br-r-ring! Cluck! Moo!: Everywhere you turn, you find exciting sounds. Students use these sounds to write their own poems based on Dr. Seuss's "Mr. Brown Can MOO! Can You?"
Students create math stories by first drawing, then writing, and finally using math symbols to show addition or subtraction.
Students shape up their reading, writing, and listening skills in this lesson by creating original diamante, acrostic, and shape poems about science.
In this lesson, students explore ekphrasis--writing inspired by art. Students find pieces of art that inspire them and compose a booklet of poems about the pieces they have chosen.
Do their minds go blank when they confront a blank piece of paper? Speedwriting can help students get started on writing and come up with topics to write about. They can then incorporate their key ideas and phrases into a narrative with the help of a graphic story organizer.
Students research engineering careers and create poetry to understand the vocabulary of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics).