Alabama ELA Standard: 4.LF.10.a

Every great author sounds like no one else. Students learn to hear an author’s voice with Charles Dickens’s dramatic A Christmas Carol, then borrow Jack London’s rugged voice, turning a flat, boring passage into writing that sounds just like him. It is reading like a writer, and it is the kind of thinking your strongest readers are hungry for.

When does a simple symbol have more power than a word?

How many different ways can we use the word “care”? Let’s find out in this Parts of Speech Party!

Start with a basic simile. Now make it more specific. Now even more. Watch how much better writing gets with each round.

Let’s make this simile about a quick baby even more specific.

Let’s make this simile about a loud class super specific!

Start with a basic simile. Now make it more specific. Now even more. Watch how much better writing gets with each round.

Look closely at Impression, Sunrise. What do you notice? Now turn those details into a poem you didn’t know you could write.

Let’s start with “As cold as fire.”

Your students will turn the iconic painting The Scream into a vivid, sensory poem.

Rather than just demand that students “write clearly,” we’ll explore the hazards of poorly written sentences… and maybe create one of our own!

The word “may” can be used for possibility or permission. It’s a modal auxiliary verb!

Is your students’ use of repetition limited to, “The girl was very, very, very fast.”? Let’s borrow some ideas from Shakespeare!

When students learn about alliteration, it’s hard to steer them away from goofy tongue-twisters. Certainly, there must be more powerful and practical ways of using alliteration. In this lesson, I draw on delicious examples from Shakespeare to show how a very advanced writer used alliteration. Then, I break those ideas down so students can try them out.

When students are told that they’re “smart”, what does this word actually mean to them? (Psst. It isn’t what we intended.)

We’ll start with the cliché “as cold as ice” and go somewhere much more interesting.