Language Arts

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.

Uplevel Grammar By Examining (And Then Creating) Another Language

After creating an above-level grammar group, I was left with the problem of creating a challenging grammar assignment. Inspired by a friend's self-created language, I encouraged my students to examine the rules of other languages. Some interesting rules they discussed included...

From “Summarize” to “Synthesize”

Even what seems like a low-level "summarize" task can become beautifully high-level when we climb Bloom's Taxonomy.

Taking A Zoologist Across Disciplines

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

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."

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 Depth and Complexity ELA Worksheet with Problems

Here’s a Depth and Complexity worksheet I used to use with my students: I look at it now and shudder. I was making so many mistakes here. Let’s just zoom out and imagine that I asked the same questions at a book club with fellow adults. Me: What is this story’s main theme? Him: Oh, […]

What Did You (Not) Do During Summer Break?

Ask your students to write about their summer breaks, but remix their activities into a new genre or setting. Perhaps they vacationed at Hogwarts, Mordor, or Tatooine? Not interested in a writing assignment?

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