Language Arts

Think Like A Psychologist

Looking to help your students go deeper into any content area? One technique is to teach them to "Think Like A Disciplinarian." This idea, part of the Depth and Complexity Framework, teaches students to analyze ideas from the point of view of a specific profession or discipline.

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.

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.

A Remix Library

A list of stories inspired by older stories to teach your students about the history of reusing ideas.

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 […]

Content Imperatives And Conflict

Conflict is an essential tool for analyzing literature, understanding history, and improving as a writer. Each year, my 6th graders discuss the types of conflict commonly found in stories and analyze writing using the content imperatives.

Using Art to Practice Reading

When you're teaching a reading skill, can you replace some of those dull sample texts with glorious artwork?

Taking A Zoologist Across Disciplines

All I did was ask students to list and explain three "disciplines." Let's take it a bit further!

What Makes An Antagonist Effective?

It's really fun to take an already good sequence, tweak it, and get something even better!

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