Language Arts
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.”
Over-Scaffolding Writing
Here’s what happens when we make a scaffold the final product.
How *Not* To Ask Questions About A Novel
These “discussion questions” highlight so many of the problems we’ve been looking at.
Taking A Zoologist Across Disciplines
All I did was ask students to list and explain three “disciplines.” Let’s take it a bit further!
Two Questions I Won’t Ask About A Famous Quote
Let’s do more than ask, “What did this person mean?”
What Makes An Antagonist Effective?
It’s really fun to take an already good sequence, tweak it, and get something even better!
Multiple Perspectives Gone Mad!!
Yes, I actually gave my students this question: “How could two experts’ 👓 perspectives regarding information from this reading selection differ from one another?” yikes.
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!
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, […]
Don’t Just List ⚖️ Ethical Issues
Let’s improve this “make a list” question to incorporate high level thinking.
Going Beyond “Identify a Story’s Problem”
My students were stuck telling me a story’s problem and solution. Let’s get thinking!
Improving “What’s The Chapter’s 🏛️ Big Idea?”
Let’s improve this bland Depth and Complexity question by getting really specific.
Don’t Just Paraphrase A Poem!
What if, instead, we re-wrote the poem in the style of a different poet?
Upgrading “Put The Events In Order”
I often see this question on language arts and social studies worksheets: “Put these events in order.” Yes, it’s low-level, but the real problem is that it’s a one-off. Let’s make a sequence of questions about the order of events.
Improving A Task About Designing A Character’s Bedroom
An under-developed task in which students designed a character’s room.
Going Beyond “Name That Genre!”
What can we do once students correctly identify a story’s genre?
Improving Identify the Figurative Language
What do we do after a student can identify the type of figurative language?
Practice Context Clues with Classics
Most context clue worksheets have incredibly low expectations.
Details Should Lead To A Big Idea
Here are two questions I’d ask students about a story What are three important 🌼 details about the main character? What is the story’s 🏛️ moral? Now, details naturally lead to big ideas. But in this case, I switched topics from “main character” to “big idea, ” which broke the natural movement. If I ask […]
Perspectives on Friendship in Charlotte’s Web
Asking students to “explain the importance” wasn’t as high-level as I thought.
Picture Books and Stories for Introducing Depth and Complexity
Three picture books that I’ve used (or would use) to introduce Depth and Complexity to students of any age.
A Playlist That Shows A Character’s Change
Here’s how I’d take one task from my choice board and focus on making it great!
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 […]
I Compared Characters, Yet Stayed At “Remember”
I set up an Analyze question, but never actually asked it! All of these questions are at the “remember” level.
How Do We Make On-Level Writers Into Advanced Writers?
I knew how to help my below-level writers become on-level. But how the heck do you make the next step?
How To Run A Novel Study
When you read a book with students, avoid getting bogged down with the nitty-gritty. Just pick one big idea and have fun reading! No quizzes, no memorizing, no essays. Just develop your students’ love of reading.
Writing in Pi-lish
Here’s the perfect constraint for March! Writing with the digits of Pi.
Analyzing Prefixes and Suffixes
Instead of just memorizing what a bunch of morphemes mean, we’re looking broadly, exploring patterns, finding unexpected similarities and weird differences.
From “Summarize” to “Synthesize”
Even what seems like a low-level “summarize” task can become beautifully high-level when we climb Bloom’s Taxonomy.
Rewrite It, But Don’t Use “E”
Here’s an interesting way to move students past mundane patterns in their writing. Ask for a rewrite, but without a letter (or two).
Using Art to Practice Reading
When you’re teaching a reading skill, can you replace some of those dull sample texts with glorious artwork?
Universal Themes and… Punctuation!?
Here’s how can we move a punctuation lesson beyond mere memorization and towards actually interesting thinking.
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.
Remix the Song “Help!”
Students took the classic song, Help!, and rewrote it to be about their collective summers.
What could we do with this Wax Museum event?
How one might revamp a “Wax Museum” project into something that focuses more on thinking than product.
Tweaks To A Character Study
A teacher sent me a sequence of questions about the story My Father’s Dragon. Based on what you’ve read so far, what is one word you could use to describe Elmer? What from the story made you choose this word? Think of other books you’ve read. What character from another story you know is similar […]
Getting Ridiculous with Parts of Speech
Here’s how you can add some spice to an otherwise dull study of parts of speech.
Rewriting a Sentence With Different Coordinating Conjunctions
The first unit in our writing program was always teaching the coordinating conjunctions. It always felt goofy teaching this to 6th graders – especially a gifted magnet class. I mean… do they really not know the difference between “and” and “but”?
The Westing Game – Book Study Ideas
Sixteen unlikely heirs? A mysterious murder? A fortune on the line? Let’s dig into The Westing Game!
Synonym Graphs
Use a two-dimensional scatter plot to dig into the nuances of several synonyms.
Creating Seemingly Unrelated Analogies
Want to encourage students to find unexpected connections across content? Here’s a quick framework based on the most important terms from both bits of content.
Finding the Fun in “It’s” vs “Its”
How do we differentiate a dull lesson like “its” vs “it’s”? I decided to push it to an extreme (and include some unexpected novelty).
A Christmas Carol – Study Guide Ideas
Take your students through Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol this holiday season and expose them to a classic while exploring the Universal Theme of Change. And, hey, since this story’s in the public domain, you can print out a PDF or link to the text at Project Gutenburg. A Christmas Carol Summary Dickens has organized […]
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler – Book Study Ideas
Here’s how I’d wrap a big idea around our study of “From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler”. We’d investigate the paradox that people want to both fit in and be unique! A quote from the author, E. L. Konigsburg, will be our entry point.
Matilda – Book Study Ideas
Roald Dahl’s Matilda, a childhood favorite of mine, opens up some fantastic discussions about adults, being brave, and how power can be used and abused.
The Resiliency Tournament
I got to work with several groups of students (of many ages) and I tried out this task: building a tournament to decide who was the most resilient historical figure or fictional character? Kids came up with some amazing ideas.
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.
Word Pyramids – A Delightful Vocabulary Puzzle
A fun, abstract vocab puzzle in which students can add one letter per line, forming a pyramid of words.
Books with 700, 800, 900, & 1000 Lexile, Recommended By Teachers
A reader was looking for examples of high-quality books for gifted/talented 4th and 5th graders, but she was constrained to a lexile range of 900-1000. Here are the recs I received…
Creating Better Research Questions
Once students have a topic they’d like to research, how do we help them form more interesting questions?
Academic Love Letters
We’re going to take the Academic Valentine idea from earlier, and extend it into a full blown love letter – just in time for Valentine’s Day!
Vocab Puzzle: Antonym Paths
Begin with a small, simple word and identify its antonym. Then, take this second word and find its antonym. Many times, you’ll find that an antonym of an antonym isn’t always related the original word.
Exploring Palindromes in ELA and Math
Palindromes are one of those fun ideas that some gifted kids just latch onto. We’ll check out palindromic words, phrases, and even numbers in this article.
Going Beyond “Challenge Words” In Spelling
Many students blow past grade-level spelling and vocabulary at a young age. Unfortunately, a common technique to “challenge” them is to find harder and more obscure words for their spelling list. Instead, let’s take advantage of the built-in complexity of common words with multiple-meanings.
What Influences A Character’s Traits?
To add depth to character analysis, let’s look beyond a character’s traits and dig into what influenced them to have those traits.
Studying Ambiguous Sentences
This type of sentence has great possibilities for classroom application because of its two different interpretations. It’s a perfect tool to: demonstrate careful reading, showcase the need for editing while writing, and encourage creativity and divergent thinking.
Jabberwocky, Parts of Speech, and Context Clues
Let’s see how we can use a classic piece of poetry to enhance a lesson on parts of speech or context clues. This provides exposure to a great work and also increases the complexity of a typical task.
An Image for Divergent Thinking Practice
I think this is an interesting way to practice our students’ divergent thinking skills. What else could this trash can’s icon represent?
Writing Mother’s Day Similes
Mother’s Day is coming up, and it’s the perfect chance to practice figurative language. Help your students create thoughtful cards, packed with rich similes and metaphors that relate directly to their mothers.
The Mysterious Benedict Society – Book Study Ideas
After it was recommended dozens of times, I finally read The Mysterious Benedict Society and I wish I had read it sooner!
Garden Path Sentences
Garden Path Sentences seem to begin one way, but quickly fall apart, forcing the reader to start over and interpret words in a new way. A simple example is: “The old man the boat.”
Exploring Characters’ Virtues and Vices
What separates a life well-lived from a poorly lived life? Aristotle believed it was moderation: too much of good thing can become just as much of a problem as too little. Looking at traits as excessive, moderate, or lacking is a unique take on character analysis.
A Remix Library
A list of stories inspired by older stories to teach your students about the history of reusing ideas.
Poe’s The Raven
The Raven is a great starting point for students’ to learn about Poe. Not only does the poem clearly demonstrate “tone,” but it is a figurative language tour de force. Plus, there are some amazing readings available online!
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.
Creating A Class Motto
Using Hilda Taba’s model of inductive thinking, use your students’ prior knowledge to develop a statement about expected class behavior.
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?
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!
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.
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.
Remix Poetry: Christmas To Thanksgiving
Let’s remix a famous Christmas poem, give it a Thanksgiving theme, and teach our students advanced poetry concepts at the same time
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.
Inductive Thinking in Spelling and Vocabulary
Let’s look at a couple ways to bring inductive thinking into word studies. We’ll examine simple plural rules all the way up to etymology of foreign words in English.
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.
Multiple Perspectives: Right And Wrong At The Same Time?
It’s essential to teach our students to think flexibly and consider multiple points of view. Flexible thinking leads to product innovation, diplomacy between nations, and advances in science. School, however, often encourages students to settle into a “one right answer” mindset.
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.
Think Like A Philosopher
Up near the top of Bloom’s taxonomy is “evaluating.” A great use of this level of thinking is to evaluate a character’s ethical choice. But we can go deeper! Let’s ask students to evaluate characters’ actions based on another character’s point of view. To add another layer, we’ll teach kids about philosophers and use their points of view as well.
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.
Symbolism and Pixel Art
Symbolism, a mainstay of literature discussion, seems too abstract and ephemeral to teach to younger students. However, with a well-constructed lesson, students will quickly get the hang of symbolic representation. We’ll finish this unit up with some great pixel-art and computer painting.
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.
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?
Analyzing Suffixes Inductively
The year opens with a vocabulary skill analyzing “Suffixes: -ful, -less, -ly.” I adjusted this lesson to examine how these suffixes change the part of speech of words, rather than the meaning.
The Tragedy of the Commons
Imagine that we all share a common resource, but no one is really in charge. How do we maintain order without an authority? This is a fantastically fuzzy situation for students to dig into.
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.
Think Like An Anthropologist to Make Inferences
Like all HM comprehension skills, “Making Inferences” appears yearly beginning in kindergarten, so I know my 6th graders have practiced, and may well have mastered, the skill. To differentiate, I turned to the model of “Thinking Like a Disciplinarian.”
Is Your Writing Process This Fun?
Teaching our students to prewrite, write, and rewrite is a difficult process. Much like getting students to show their work in math, process writing is a challenge for gifted students who work intuitively and are annoyed by artificial processes. What better motivation is there than the chance to point out someone else’s errors AND be rewarded for it?
Exploring Morality Behind Actions
No one can deny that our gifted students have great power. They may be intellectual powerhouses, grasping concepts years ahead of peers. They may be emotionally sensitive, becoming aware of issues such as mortality at an early age. They may be leaders of people, showing leadership qualities from the very beginning. How do we teach them to use this power?
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.
Taking “Noting Details” To A Higher Level
By 6th grade, our reading program’s comprehension skills have become a bit basic for most of my gifted students. I’ve been working on increasing the depth and complexity of these skills. In this case, “Noting Details” has become “Explicit Vs. Implicit Details.”
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.
Patterns In Writing I: Introduction
Take a break from teaching the details of writing and examine narrative writing from a larger perspective. How can structure increase creativity in writing? Take your gifted writers on a journey through common patterns in narrative writing.
How I’d Change this Question from my Textbook
Here are a dozen ways to transform a not-so-critical-thinking question from one of my district’s textbooks.
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…
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.
Reordering A Mixed Up Paragraph
I combined my utility Paragraphy with Project Gutenberg, The Differentiator, and The Wizard Of Oz to create a differentiated lesson about how to order sentences within a paragraph for gifted students.
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.
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.
Building Confidence in Speaking Skills
When preparing your students for standardized tests, those little standards labeled Speaking And Listening can easily slip by the wayside. And yet, is there any skill more important in landing a job, surviving social engagements, or being a successful leader than confident oral language skills? Teach your students to analyze great speeches to become better public speakers themselves.