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.
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.
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.
Coats of Arms, Seals, and Other Heraldry Symbolic seals, crests, and coats of arms are a common concept across cultures. From the simplicity of Japanese mon to the regality of English coats of arms all the way to America’s Great Seal, humans around the world create graphical representations of themselves.
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.
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.
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.
Ask Creative Questions Is this the message I want to give to my gifted students? "Follow the directions?" This is a room full of students who are creative, flexible, divergent thinkers. These are the future Noble Laureates, inventors, and revolutionaries. Let's allow them (or better yet: force them) to exercise their creative muscles.
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?
Compare and Contrast Movie Trailers Over Time Here's a movie made in 1977, and its trailer is barely watchable! In fact, it almost made me not want to watch Star Wars, a movie I know almost by heart. Perhaps we're onto something interesting for our students to analyze.
