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Differentiation TechniqueEmbed A Classic

Read The Overview: Embed A Classic

An easy way to spice up any lesson is to remove the god-awful samples and replace them with selections from great works of art, music, film, tv shows, and historic moments. You get the added bonus of exposing students to new ideas.

Specific Examples of “Embed A Classic”

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.

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!

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.

Classic Paintings for your Classroom

Exposing students to great pieces of art is an easy way to enhance a lesson, provide a visual way to practice a skill, and educate our students beyond the prescribed curriculum. Here's a list of works that you can easily grab and use in your class.

Differentiating “Compare & Contrast” with Classics

Here's how I differentiated the reading skill of "Compare & Contrast" for my students, who have been successfully comparing and contrasting since kindergarten. Students investigated artists, developed a haiku, and learned how to shade with pencils.

Start A Lesson With A Music Video

I love collecting intriguing images and videos – things that stop me in my tracks and pique my curiosity. I always figure that if it fascinates me, students would probably be interested also. Often, these visuals work as wonderful hooks for a lesson you need to teach.

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.

Using Art to Practice Reading

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

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 […]

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 […]

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