This lesson remixes an original lesson plan entitled "The Poetry of Emily Dickinson" by Melissa Strong: Melissa Strong. Retrieved from the Digital Public Library of America .

In this lesson, activities 1 and 2 from the original source are combined so that students emulate the writing style of Dickinson to write their own original poetry based on modern issues concerning women. An extension activity asks students to transfer their understanding of how literary elements shape meaning to different poets who each have a distinct style.

Multiple Meaning WordsDirections: Students will work in teacher-assigned pairs to determine the meaning and part of speech of words with multiple meanings. Students will then write grammatically-correct and correctly constructed sentences for each word. Each sentence must include context clues that allow the reader to determine the meaning of the word as it is being used in the sentence. 

This lesson reviews citizenship expectations as students effectively communicate in small groups and the whole-class setting to prepare for a trip to the Science Museum! Students analyze and sort behaviors into categories, based on the attributes or actions described while reviewing vocabulary critical to a museum visit. Special thanks to the Science Museum of Western Virginia and the Center for Educational Networks and Impacts at Virginia Tech for their advisement and resource contribution to this lesson. 

This video is part of the Learn and Grow with WHRO TV series. Watch Carolyn Harris teach about friendship and retelling stories.

Springing off of the picture book The Name Jar by Yangsook Choi, students contemplate diverse cultures and customs before learning about how a computer program translates English to binary code. This resource combines ELA with computer science and includes interactive read aloud questions, a discussion about culturally diverse backgrounds, review of the prefix bi-, introduction of binary language (with a translation chart), and instructions to create binary bracelets.

Natural disasters such as volcanoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, and wildfires happen all over the world. Understanding how natural disasters happen and why helps children feel less anxious and more prepared. Therefore, this unit focuses on teaching students the science behind each natural disaster while also explaining what to do if they live in an area prone to a particular natural disaster. Over the course of the unit, students hear about many famous natural disasters, but the unit places more of an emphasis on how the disasters happen rather than exploring the devastation or destruction caused by previous natural disasters. The unit provides many opportunities for students to learn more about recent natural disasters, including a culminating research project.

The texts in this unit were chosen because of their wide variety of text features, content, and accessibility. Over the course of the unit, students will read texts that are very technical and rely heavily on text features, diagrams, and illustrations, as well as texts that are written as informational narratives. Students will be challenged to think about the structures the authors use to help the reader interact with and learn the content. Additionally, students will learn the importance of referring to specific details from the text and using those details to explain and teach back the newly learned material. This unit serves as the foundation for building strong reading habits and routines and setting high expectations for text consumption. Clear models should be included in the unit to help students build a deeper understanding of how to actively read and annotate informational texts for key ideas, text features, and vocabulary. This unit also serves as a launching point for strong discussions. Students will frequently be challenged to debate questions from the text; therefore, strong habits of discussion need to be introduced over the course of the unit.

This lesson remixes an original lesson plan created by Austin Meyer entitled: "Teach Design: New Choice." This will work well as an introduction to a storytelling unit or a creative writing class. It is also a fun and interactive anticipatory activity when introducing the idea of close-reading for authorial choice. Students will work in small groups to create an original story based on a whole-class prompt. Each group, however, will have a different literary element to change as the story continues (for example, character or conflict). When "new choice" is called, a new storyteller from the group takes over and adjusts the story as needed in order to meet the challenge of the new choice.

This lesson remixes an original lesson plan created by Austin Meyer entitled: "Teach Design: New Choice." This will work well as an introduction to a storytelling unit or a creative writing class. It is also a fun and interactive anticipatory activity when introducing the idea of close-reading for authorial choice. Students will work in small groups to create an original story based on a whole-class prompt. Each group, however, will have a different literary element to change as the story continues (for example, character or conflict). When "new choice" is called, a new storyteller from the group takes over and adjusts the story as needed in order to meet the challenge of the new choice.

This is an introductory lesson to Science SOL 5.3 - The student will investigate and understand that there is a relationship between force and energy of moving objects.
While reading the book, students will stop at predetermined points and visualize what is happening in the book based on the author' words.

This lesson takes simple nursery rhymes and gives the students the opportunity to build on multiple use vocabulary and context vocabulary skills

In this unit, students explore the meaning of family, community, and identity by reading the core text One Crazy Summer. Through the eyes of eleven-year-old Delphine, readers experience life in Oakland, California, in 1968, the height of the Black Panther movement. Delphine and her two younger sisters, Vonetta and Fern, spend a summer in Oakland visiting their estranged mother who sends them to spend their days at a camp run by the Black Panthers. Over the course of the summer, the girls learn about what it means to be part of a revolution, what the Black Panther Party was fighting for, and why the Black Panther Party was important during this time period. Through it all, they build confidence in themselves and their relationships with others as they learn to challenge and respond to social issues in the community. It is our hope that this unit, in conjunction with others in the series, will help students understand the way experiences shape our identities and beliefs, and how children can help bring about change in the community.

In reading, this unit continues to build on reading strategies and skills covered in previous units. It is assumed that students are able to quote or paraphrase accurately from the text, interpret figurative language, and summarize sections of the text. These skills should continue to be spiraled throughout the unit; however, the main focuses for this unit are determining theme and analyzing how it is developed over the course of the novel or poem, analyzing point of view and the impact it has on the way events are portrayed, and comparing characters and their responses to situations.

This lesson allows students to decode multisyllabic words with open and closed syllables and compare and contrast open and closed syllables.

This activity can be used to review the nonfiction organizational patterns. I use this review activity as a wrap-up/final review with the organizational patterns. The activity could also be used as a test-prep lesson. The teacher will begin by reviewing the organizational patterns. The teacher will model finding articles written using the different organizational patterns by showing examples of each.

Students will learn about abstraction by examining a model computer and then breaking down several medieval romances into their essential components. 

Using microbits have students write a simple code and then debug a similar one.  Then compare that to  editing their writing.

Want to introduce how to write basic code by hand and review figurative language at the same time? This lesson is just for you! Using Figurative Language task cards and animal figurines, just for fun, students will learn how to correctly create if-then-else statements. This activity can be modified to use whatever items you have around your class in place of the animal figurines. 

Looking for a new way to teach direct and indirect characterization? By connecting these English concepts to Computer Science, students will not only learn how to describe the characters they are reading about, but they will also be able to see how these concepts apply to computer hardware, software, abstraction, and End-User Agreements.