Perspectives on Friendship in Charlotte’s Web Asking students to "explain the importance" wasn't as high-level as I thought.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
Don’t just list examples of writing techniques. Let’s improve Shakespeare! I stopped and started with "What 👄 special writing techniques does the author use? List examples."
What Makes An Antagonist Effective? It's really fun to take an already good sequence, tweak it, and get something even better!
