Composing Cinquain Poems: A Quick-Writing Activity
(View Complete Item Description)Students use themed graphic organizers to compose cinquain poems on topics common in the early elementary classroom.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
All resources in JCS ELA Team
Cooking Up Descriptive Language: Designing Restaurant Menus
(View Complete Item Description)Students explore the menu genre by analyzing existing menus from local restaurants. They review adjectives and descriptive writing and then work in groups to create their own custom menus.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Cowboys and Castles: Interacting With Fractured Texas Tales
(View Complete Item Description)What do cowboy hats have to do with fairy tales? Two traditional fairy tales and their Texas-based counterparts set the stage for five different ways to respond to text.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Creating Question and Answer Books through Guided Research
(View Complete Item Description)This series of activities is designed to teach research strategies. Students use KWL charts to guide their inquiry and publish their results in a collaborative question and answer book.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Dancing Minds and Shouting Smiles: Teaching Personification Through Poetry
(View Complete Item Description)Students learn about personification by reading and discussing poems and then brainstorm nouns and verbs to create personification in their own poems.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Delicious, Tasty, Yummy: Enriching Writing with Adjectives and Synonyms
(View Complete Item Description)Students thoroughly explore identifying synonyms and adjectives before using them to add variety and interest to their own writing.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Developing Searching, Skimming, and Scanning Skills With Internet Bingo
(View Complete Item Description)Student pairs aim to be the first team to call out "bingo" in this lesson in which they use skimming and scanning to locate information about ancient Greece and Rome.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Developing a Living Definition of Reading in the Elementary Classroom
(View Complete Item Description)Using the guiding question, "What is reading?" students interact with a variety of texts as they uncover the skills necessary to interact with texts and develop a definition of reading.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Diagram It! Identifying, Comparing, and Writing About Nonfiction Texts
(View Complete Item Description)Students compare the traits fact and fiction by using a Venn diagram to compare fiction and nonfiction books about Native Americans.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan, Unit of Study
Dr. Seuss's Sound Words: Playing with Phonics and Spelling
(View Complete Item Description)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?"
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Exploring Compare and Contrast Structure in Expository Texts
(View Complete Item Description)Students build their understanding of the terms "compare" and "contrast" by participating in class discussions, using Internet resources, working collaboratively, and by visually representing information in a Venn diagram.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Fact Fragment Frenzy
(View Complete Item Description)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.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Interactive
Fairy Tales from Life
(View Complete Item Description)Picture books provide the basis for an analysis of fairy tale elements before students write their own original tales.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan, Unit of Study
Flip-a-Chip
(View Complete Item Description)The Flip-a-Chip activity provides hands-on practice with affixes and roots, and also promotes comprehension through structural analysis and vocabulary in context.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Interactive
From Fact to Fiction: Drawing and Writing Stories
(View Complete Item Description)Students gather factual information about frogs and toads to create nonfiction and fiction stories. Drawing is used for prewriting.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan, Unit of Study
Hints about Print
(View Complete Item Description)Hints about Print demonstrates the process of evaluating a nonfiction print resource to determine its appropriateness for a research project.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Interactive
Inferring How and Why Characters Change
(View Complete Item Description)Students will really get into character when they read short stories and analyze the howŐs and whyŐs of charactersŐ behaviors.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Junie B. Jones Introduces Literacy Mystery Boxes
(View Complete Item Description)Like Junie B. Jones, students will be saying "Wait till you hear this" after listening to a Junie B. story and creating mystery boxes to help retell the story.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Unit of Study
Listen to Me Tell You the Story
(View Complete Item Description)Students will listen to a familiar story with repetitive lines that the children can remember. They will make puppets and retell the story in small groups with an adult volunteer or an older child. Main Curriculum Tie: English Language Arts Kindergarten Reading: Literature Standard 2, With prompting and support, retell familiar stories, including key details. All children will participate in retelling a familiar story using puppets. This will help develop oral language and comprehension.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan, Unit of Study
Mail Time! An Integrated Postcard and Geography Study
(View Complete Item Description)Children write and receive postcards from friends and family, and then chart where all those postcards come from on a classroom map.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan