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!
Tweaks To A Character Study A teacher sent me a sequence of questions about the story My Father’s Dragon. Based on what you’ve read so far, what is one word you could use to describe Elmer? What from the story made you choose this word? Think of other books you’ve read. What character from another story you know is similar […]
Beyond “Describe How This Changed Over Time” I want to go beyond just listing how a character changed. Let's get students thinking about that change!
Adding The Beatles to a Lesson on Cause and Effect For my students, simply teaching a direct instruction lesson about cause and effect is a recipe for boredom and behavior problems. My solution involved bringing in a little help from The Beatles.
From “Summarize” to “Synthesize” Even what seems like a low-level "summarize" task can become beautifully high-level when we climb Bloom's Taxonomy.
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.
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.
Upgrading “Put The Events In Order” I often see this question on language arts and social studies worksheets: "Put these events in order." Yes, it's low-level, but the real problem is that it's a one-off. Let's make a sequence of questions about the order of events.
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.
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.
