Language Arts
What do we do with advanced students who need something more in language arts? Here are bunches of articles about how to differentiate vocabulary, word studies, spelling, and reading.
How *Not* To Ask Questions About A Novel
These “discussion questions” highlight so many of the problems we’ve been looking at.
Free Verse from A Particular Point of View
My go-to writing task is a free verse poem written from a particular perspective. I learned this idea from my boss, Sandi, who learned it from Joan Franklin Smutny (I think!). You can use ANYTHING as your prompt. A piece of art works well to introduce the idea, but you can move to writing once […]
How To Run A Novel Study
When you read a book with students, avoid getting bogged down with the nitty-gritty. Just pick one big idea and have fun reading! No quizzes, no memorizing, no essays. Just develop your students’ love of reading.
Writing in Pi-lish
Here’s the perfect constraint for March! Writing with the digits of Pi.
Analyzing Prefixes and Suffixes
Instead of just memorizing what a bunch of morphemes mean, we’re looking broadly, exploring patterns, finding unexpected similarities and weird differences.
Rewrite It, But Don’t Use “E”
Here’s an interesting way to move students past mundane patterns in their writing. Ask for a rewrite, but without a letter (or two).
Universal Themes and… Punctuation!?
Here’s how can we move a punctuation lesson beyond mere memorization and towards actually interesting thinking.
A Classic: “Who’s On First” and 21st Century Kids
My 21st century 12-year-olds absolutely died watching Abbot and Costello’s “Who’s On First” skit. And we got a great homophone activity out of it too.
Getting Ridiculous with Parts of Speech
Here’s how you can add some spice to an otherwise dull study of parts of speech.
How To Get A Kid To Read
No reader has ever said, “I love reading because my parents made me read challenging books” or “Once my teacher made me read at Lexile 980, I discovered how wonderful reading is!”
The Westing Game – Book Study Ideas
Sixteen unlikely heirs? A mysterious murder? A fortune on the line? Let’s dig into The Westing Game!
Synonym Graphs
Use a two-dimensional scatter plot to dig into the nuances of several synonyms.
Moving Beyond The Cliché With Alliteration
One mark of an advanced writer is their use of figurative language. An on-level writer might use figurative language correctly but will rely heavily on clichés. An advanced writer will surprise us with interesting, often more nuanced use of figurative language. And nowhere is this more apparent than with alliteration.
Finding the Fun in “It’s” vs “Its”
How do we differentiate a dull lesson like “its” vs “it’s”? I decided to push it to an extreme (and include some unexpected novelty).
A Christmas Carol – Study Guide Ideas
Take your students through Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol this holiday season and expose them to a classic while exploring the Universal Theme of Change. And, hey, since this story’s in the public domain, you can print out a PDF or link to the text at Project Gutenburg. A Christmas Carol Summary Dickens has organized […]
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler – Book Study Ideas
Here’s how I’d wrap a big idea around our study of “From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler”. We’d investigate the paradox that people want to both fit in and be unique! A quote from the author, E. L. Konigsburg, will be our entry point.
Matilda – Book Study Ideas
Roald Dahl’s Matilda, a childhood favorite of mine, opens up some fantastic discussions about adults, being brave, and how power can be used and abused.
A Wrinkle In Time – Novel Study Ideas
Madeleine L’Engle’s 1962 science-fiction classic, A Wrinkle in Time makes for a fantastic classroom novel study.
Word Pyramids – A Delightful Vocabulary Puzzle
A fun, abstract vocab puzzle in which students can add one letter per line, forming a pyramid of words.
Examples of Archetypes who are Ladies
Long ago, I created a lesson to help my students understand character archetypes. As I’ve revised this lesson, I’ve tried to balance the male/female ratio. For some archetypes, it’s pretty hard and I’d love your help!
Books with 700, 800, 900, & 1000 Lexile, Recommended By Teachers
A reader was looking for examples of high-quality books for gifted/talented 4th and 5th graders, but she was constrained to a lexile range of 900-1000. Here are the recs I received…
Creating Better Research Questions
Once students have a topic they’d like to research, how do we help them form more interesting questions?
Academic Love Letters
We’re going to take the Academic Valentine idea from earlier, and extend it into a full blown love letter – just in time for Valentine’s Day!
Vocab Puzzle: Antonym Paths
Begin with a small, simple word and identify its antonym. Then, take this second word and find its antonym. Many times, you’ll find that an antonym of an antonym isn’t always related the original word.
Exploring Palindromes in ELA and Math
Palindromes are one of those fun ideas that some gifted kids just latch onto. We’ll check out palindromic words, phrases, and even numbers in this article.
Going Beyond “Challenge Words” In Spelling
Many students blow past grade-level spelling and vocabulary at a young age. Unfortunately, a common technique to “challenge” them is to find harder and more obscure words for their spelling list. Instead, let’s take advantage of the built-in complexity of common words with multiple-meanings.
What Influences A Character’s Traits?
To add depth to character analysis, let’s look beyond a character’s traits and dig into what influenced them to have those traits.
Studying Ambiguous Sentences
This type of sentence has great possibilities for classroom application because of its two different interpretations. It’s a perfect tool to: demonstrate careful reading, showcase the need for editing while writing, and encourage creativity and divergent thinking.
Writing Mother’s Day Similes
Mother’s Day is coming up, and it’s the perfect chance to practice figurative language. Help your students create thoughtful cards, packed with rich similes and metaphors that relate directly to their mothers.
The Mysterious Benedict Society – Book Study Ideas
After it was recommended dozens of times, I finally read The Mysterious Benedict Society and I wish I had read it sooner!
Advanced Vocab: Words With Foreign Origins
Don’t bore students with another dull list of spelling words. Challenge them with weekly lists of common English words and phrases borrowed from another language.
Garden Path Sentences
Garden Path Sentences seem to begin one way, but quickly fall apart, forcing the reader to start over and interpret words in a new way. A simple example is: “The old man the boat.”
Puzzler: A Number With ‘A’
Counting up, what’s the first number with an “a” in it?
Exploring Characters’ Virtues and Vices
What separates a life well-lived from a poorly lived life? Aristotle believed it was moderation: too much of good thing can become just as much of a problem as too little. Looking at traits as excessive, moderate, or lacking is a unique take on character analysis.
Get Students Out Of Creative Ruts
Sometimes students need a little structure to force them into a more creative state of mind. Here are a few ideas for interesting writing prompts
Classic Halloween Stories
With Halloween approaching, it’s a great time to expose students to some spooky classics. Lucky for us, many of these stories are in the public domain and freely available in many formats.
Homographs and Homonyms
This product features 125 homographs and homonyms to upgrade your spelling and vocabulary lists. Includes definitions, examples, parts of speech, and pronunciation guides.
Puzzle: Words Within Words
In need of some nice word puzzles that will keep your students busy? Ask them to find as many words as they can within another word. For example: can you find 10 words made from the letters in “soldier”? How about 20? 50?
Puzzle: Word Ladders
One of my favorite tricks in the classroom was having a “puzzle of the day.” The great difficulty was finding puzzles that challenged my students, but didn’t require meticulous work or strange knowledge. Word Ladders were always a consistent hit.
Using A Classic: Charlie Chaplin
Integrating a classic is a great way to pump up an otherwise simple lesson. It seems like a black and white movie is the last thing a kid would want to see, but classics are classics for a reason!
3 Advanced Literary Techniques
Students’ education about literary devices seems to max out with personification, similes, and other types of figurative language. But what about more complex tools?
A Holiday-Themed Shakespearean Sonnet
Now we’re going to create our own holiday-themed Shakespearean Sonnet. To add complexity (and help our students get started!), we’ll write from the point of view of a specific holiday decoration, tradition, or character.
Patterns In Writing: Conflict
Discussing types of conflict is a great first step towards building a strong narrative. Although the term conjures up images of ninja battles for many of our students, conflict can take on many more sophisticated forms than physical fights.
Writing Better Personal Narratives
How can we apply literary themes, five act plots, and types of conflict to upgrade students’ personal narratives?
Ideas for Idiom Activities
Here are four idiom activites I’ve used.
Remix Poetry: Christmas To Thanksgiving
Let’s remix a famous Christmas poem, give it a Thanksgiving theme, and teach our students advanced poetry concepts at the same time
Halloween: Characters Dressed As Characters
What if characters from film or literature dress up like other characters based on some parallel such as: conflict, trait, accomplishment, etc.
Persuasive Writing: Holiday Vs Holiday
Let’s write a persuasive essay about one holiday from the point of view of another holiday’s “mascot.” For example, what would the Easter Bunny think about Christmas, how would Santa feel about Valentine’s Day, and what would a Turkey have to say about St. Patrick’s Day?
Researching Idiom Origins
Learning about idioms is simply a fun activity that students will enjoy far more than writing spelling lists out five times each. Researching idiom origins is a great example of assigning gifted students less, but more complex work than their grade-level peers.
Analyze Characters With Personality Types
Previously, we discussed using morality, multiple intelligences, and scholarly habits to analyze characters. Not only does this add deep layers to questioning, but (more importantly) it provides opportunities to discuss gifted students’ unique emotional needs. Personality types are another tool that serve these two needs.
What If Another Creator Created A Creation?
I came across these drawings by Adam Watson. They’re scenes and characters from Star Wars, remade in the style of Dr. Seuss. What a fascinating way to extend a typical writing assignment: ask students to recreate a story as if it were created by another author.
Evaluating Characters on a Graph
Here’s an idea to integrate two-dimensional graphing with deep character analysis. Use the right characters, and you’ve got an exciting debate on your hands. Plus, it leads to a beautiful product that’s perfect for Open House.
Symbolism and Pixel Art
Symbolism, a mainstay of literature discussion, seems too abstract and ephemeral to teach to younger students. However, with a well-constructed lesson, students will quickly get the hang of symbolic representation. We’ll finish this unit up with some great pixel-art and computer painting.
Thanksgiving Haikus
This year, I changed one requirement. Students had to compose a haiku as the body of their card. This gave me a chance to introduce a type of poetry that I like to use throughout the year, while still maintaining the purpose of expressing unexpected thankfulness to someone.
Analyzing Suffixes Inductively
The year opens with a vocabulary skill analyzing “Suffixes: -ful, -less, -ly.” I adjusted this lesson to examine how these suffixes change the part of speech of words, rather than the meaning.
Video: Make A Movie Trailer To Analyze Tone
Here’s part of my technology presentation from CAG 2011. In this project, students will develop a movie trailer of a story they have read in class. The purpose is to analyze the tone of the original story and recreate it in a multimedia format.
3D Character Analysis: Gardner, Kaplan, and Kohlberg
As we review for midyear tests, my students are working in groups to analyze eight characters from any story from this years’ readings. I’ve given them three dimensions to use when looking at each character. Each dimension is based on concepts created by three different researchers: Howard Gardner, Lawrence Kohlberg, and Sandra Kaplan.
Is Your Writing Process This Fun?
Teaching our students to prewrite, write, and rewrite is a difficult process. Much like getting students to show their work in math, process writing is a challenge for gifted students who work intuitively and are annoyed by artificial processes. What better motivation is there than the chance to point out someone else’s errors AND be rewarded for it?
111 Greek and Latin Word Parts
To differentiate spelling and vocabulary for my gifted students, I incorporate words with Greek and Latin origins. This list is a compilation of 111 Greek and Latin roots, prefixes, and suffixes, along with 35 groups of 5 related English words, plus 5 task cards.
Mega Homophone List
Challenge your gifted students and advanced spellers with this list of 320 homophones arranged into groups of ten. Also includes five task cards for independent work with homophones.
All About Character Archetypes
Another example of “structure that increases creativity” is character archetypes. An archetype, according to Wikipedia, is “an original model of a person, ideal example, or a prototype upon which others are copied, patterned, or emulated.” Let’s use an inductive lesson to teach our students about these literary tools.
Patterns In Writing III: Themes
We’re continuing our journey through a writing unit focused on the patterns of great writing. This lesson, number three in the series, covers commonly used themes. Be amazed as your students begin developing stories around themes of redemption, coming of age, and the hero’s journey.
Patterns In Writing II: Plot Structure
We’re continuing our unit about patterns in writing. This time, let’s examine the traditional five-act dramatic structure through the modern classic, Finding Nemo. Remember, we’re also framing the whole unit around the big idea that “structure increases creativity.”
Patterns In Writing I: Introduction
Take a break from teaching the details of writing and examine narrative writing from a larger perspective. How can structure increase creativity in writing? Take your gifted writers on a journey through common patterns in narrative writing.
Shakespeare & Gifted Students
To a young student, Shakespeare is the academic equivalent of Mt. Everest. However, with a little coaching (ok, a lot of coaching), my students are able to dig into the Bard’s words and pull out an understanding of the plot as well as some of his incredible figurative language. I bet yours can too!
Uplevel Grammar By Examining (And Then Creating) Another Language
After creating an above-level grammar group, I was left with the problem of creating a challenging grammar assignment. Inspired by a friend’s self-created language, I encouraged my students to examine the rules of other languages. Some interesting rules they discussed included…
Reordering A Mixed Up Paragraph
I combined my utility Paragraphy with Project Gutenberg, The Differentiator, and The Wizard Of Oz to create a differentiated lesson about how to order sentences within a paragraph for gifted students.
Meeting Advanced Learners’ Needs in Language Arts
To start differentiating in Language Arts, it’s often as simple as upgrading your examples. Bring in authentically interesting novels, paragraphs, sentences, phrases, and words.
Concept Attainment: A Model for Inductive Thinking
The first grammar lesson in our reading program is titled “types of sentences.” Nothing excites gifted 11 year olds less than watching me explain the difference between interrogative and declarative sentences. This year, rather than teach the lesson using direct instruction, I used another model of instruction: concept attainment.
Advanced Vocabulary Sets
I know many gifted students slog through the typical vocabulary contract week after week. I know because I put my own students through it. However, gifted students can get more from vocabulary and spelling study than writing the word five times, writing the definition, and then using it in a sentence.
Movie Previews and Poems’ Tones
In California, both Third and Sixth grade teachers are required to teach students to recognize elements that contribute to the tone of a written piece. I struggled with this abstract concept before landing on an engaging tool to help express the meaning of tone: movie previews.
Using Pre-Assessment To Group Within My Class in Language Arts
Nothing stirs up behavior problems like trying to teach a gifted student something they already know. After watching my class average over 90% month after month on their Houghton Mifflin end of unit tests, I began to get a sneaky suspicion that some of them already knew the material prior to my instruction. This realization led to my use of the HM Theme Skills tests as a pre-assessment to create flexible groups.
Writing a Song to Respond to Literature
As I walked around the room with my guitar, groups of students raised their hands, asking “Can you come check ours!?” I approached and sang the lyrics they had written, strumming along to check their rhythm. My students were writing songs as a novel way of responding to literature. Literary Response as Song In my […]