Standard 1: Communicating Through Writing

Students will present their representative campaigns created in Scratch to the class. They will take notes during each presentation. A mini-voting session will take place after all campaigns have been reviewed.  This is the third and final part of an integrated computer science and civics mini-unit. 

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will use word maps to differentiate between the three branches of government and become more familiar with the vocabulary. They will be tasked with creating a short comic strip depicted themselves teaching their understanding. 

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will make a claim supporting American’s civil participation as key to preserving the republic. They will write a claim that supports one of these two topics: the significance of public service or volunteerism. While writing an organized piece with resource-based findings, students will create a PowerPoint presentation of their findings.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will learn ways to help keep the ocean clean by recycling and write letters to lobby government officials to support recycling programs. They will decide which materials are most important to recycle by looking at several characteristics of the materials including whether they are renewable or nonrenewable, if the material will decompose, and the amount of the materials currently being recycled in this MEA.

Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations.  Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this partial reading of Kate DiCamillo's story The Tale of Despereaux students will meet a variety of charming, and not so charming, characters. Students will identify figurative language within the text and explain how it contributes to understanding the characters. At the end of the lesson, students will make a claim about one of the characters and support their claim using text evidence.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze and discuss the characteristics and story lines of two different fables, "The Owl and The Grasshopper" and "The Town Mouse and The Country Mouse," and then write a fable of their own.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson on Aesop's Fable "The Lost Wig" will provide students the opportunity to share and discuss their ideas of the fable’s theme. Students will work together in cooperative pairs to determine the theme "The Lost Wig." They will also have the opportunity to add on to the ending of "The Lost Wig" to enhance the theme.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson will provide an in depth look at informational text that is heavy with graphic features and links science to reading. By the completion of the lesson, the students will have studied the text features and text structure of an informational text. They will use information provided to explain an author’s claim.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson will provide an in-depth look at the folk tale, "The Sly Fox and The Little Red Hen." By the completion of the lesson, students will have described the different character perspectives. They will also have written a new version of the folk tale based on the things they learned about the characters and that puts a twist on the original version.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will have an opportunity to learn about transition words. They willpractice editing sentences to include transitions and use these transition words in a writing activity.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson students will practice creating a variety of introductions for narrative writing using fairy tales as the springboard.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will take notes about the Everglades using a variety of resources. Students will identify appropriate text features that can be used to convey information. As a final product, students will practice their expository writing by creating an informational brochure about the Everglades that uses the description text structure and multiple text features.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this beginning lesson on using transitional word and phrases, students will explore the use of varied transitions in a published book and then include varied transitions within their own short narrative writing piece.

Type: Lesson Plan

During the lesson, students will listen to the story, The Frog Prince, in order to write an argumentative essay using the theme of the story. The students are set to the task of writing an argumentative essay as well as practicing the skills of peer editing. The students will have an opportunity to share their argumentative writings with classmates.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will briefly discuss background knowledge of the Berlin Airlift following World War II and then read Mercedes and the Chocolate Pilot by Patricia A. Pierce. Students will then create a narrative story in which they describe an act of kindness. Students will utilize an editing checklist for giving and receiving peer feedback.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will be able to identify similes and metaphors within a piece of literature. Students will be able to determine the meaning of the simile or metaphor and explain how it contributes to the text. The students will be able to then use their understanding of similes and metaphors to apply them to their own narrative writing.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson introduces students to a creative and engaging way to understand story structure and elements of plot by allowing the students to write and act out a play. Students make selections from a provided list featuring various settings, characters, and conflicts and build their creative plays using a ready-made story feature template.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, the students delve into the world of understanding characters and how to develop them in their narrative writing. Students will develop a deeper understanding of characters as the class reviews character traits as well as the development of the main character throughout the story. In the final assessment, students will develop their own characters from picture form to written form to build understanding and deeper meaning of characters. Students will create a storyboard that allows for five to six pictures of a main character with an accompanying storyline that is organized with a clear beginning, middle, and end. They will additionally use digital writing tools to plan a narrative piece.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will use resources from the classroom and the school media center to conduct research on a topic of their choosing. Students will then plan and draft an expository essay using their research as their sources. Their research will become the evidence that is cited in their text and what they use to inform their readers on their topic. Students will confer with classmates on expository planning and construction, and will give, as well as receive, critical feedback to other students to help them make their writing better.

Type: Lesson Plan

This Model Eliciting Activity (MEA) is written at a 4th grade level. The Pollinator MEA provides students with an engineering problem in which they must work as a team to design a procedure to select the best pollinator for certain situations.

Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will use ears of corn to write a descriptive paragraph using adjectives to improve their writing.

Type: Lesson Plan

For this lesson, students will be able to improve their writing skills by generating ideas through brainstorming and group discussion, particularly as it relates to using more descriptive details.

Type: Lesson Plan

Explore the adventures of the MacIvey family with A Land Remembered Student Edition, Volume 1. Tag along as the family overcomes tragedy in the Florida wilderness while learning to use evidence in the text to support thinking. In this lesson students will learn about what life was like for pioneers in Florida. Students will relate to the characters by writing journal entries from a character's perspective.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this project students will research a mountain ecosystem. They will create a presentation of their ecosystem that includes information on animals and vegetation, which will also demonstrate the flow of energy through the ecosystem. Students will interpret and analyze the data to hypothesize what would happen if a species was removed or added to the flow of energy. To finalize, students will write an explanatory piece that describes the possible changes that would take place if an animal was removed from an ecosystem and how that would affect the food chain.

Type: Project

Alejandro Brice and his family immigrated from Cuba at the beginning of the Cuban Revolution. His father was jailed as a counter-revolutionary sympathizer and upon release, the family fled the country. Dr. Brice shares his memories of his “freedom wings”, the culture shock of growing up in Ohio as immigrants, learning English in elementary school, watching his family start over, and becoming a U.S. Citizen. Dr. Brice is a college professor specializing in the education of immigrant children and English language learners.

Type: Video/Audio/Animation