Language Arts

Rather than just memorizing word parts, students will use those word parts to create four possible products.

Blow up a paragraph into individual sentences. Now reassemble it. The clues hiding in each sentence will surprise you.

We’ll take two seemingly unrelated pieces of content (say volcanoes and the human body) and then build analogies to connect the two ideas. In the end, students can create a skit, comic, or story relating the two concepts.

We tell students to ‘show, not tell’ — but that advice is useless until they experience the difference. This lesson makes it click.

‘Add more variety!’ teachers say. But how? This lesson gives students actual techniques instead of vague advice.

What on earth is a Plexidemokinesis? Break apart the Greek and Latin roots, figure out what it should mean, then invent what it describes.

COLD to COOL. BAND to SING. Change one letter at a time — can you find the path?

In a sentence, punctuation may seem meek when compared to those mighty words, but punctuation has incredible power over the meaning of a sentence. Students will try re-punctuating sentences to find new meanings – without changing a single word!

Add a letter at each step to form a new word. Can you connect the starting point and ending point?

Students use 12 random phrases to create a story that takes place at the zoo.

Pi can go beyond circles! What if you wrote using the digits of pi as your guide?

How many words can you find within PARKING?

COLD to COOL. BAND to SING. Change one letter at a time — can you find the path?

Put a grumpy character next to a joyful one and they make each other stand out even more. Opposites are powerful!

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

Five emoji. One story. Where will your imagination take you?

Can someone do the right thing, but for the wrong reason?

How many words can you find within February?

What if your students rewrote Dickens in the style of Hemingway and vice versa?

Five emoji. One story. Where will your imagination take you?

How many words can you find within rainbow?

How many words can you find within “scarecrow”?

Five emoji. One story. Where will your imagination take you?

We’ll show students how to add more variety to their writing by starting sentences with a reason, a prepositional phrase, and a simile.

Imagine being a character in a story. Are you worried that your story’s narrator may inaccurately describe you? What if they reveal something you wanted to be kept secret? Do narrators have too much power!?

Can you use the context clues to get these sentences about the coral reef back into the correct order?

Ready to push kids beyond the boring, old ABAB rhyme scheme and into something a bit more complex?

Add a letter at each step to form a new word. Can you connect the starting point and ending point?

Five emoji. One story. Where will your imagination take you?

Can you use the context clues to get these sentences about automobiles back into the correct order?

Can your students match multiple meanings of the same five words?

Five sets of idioms related to fire!

Add a letter at each step to form a new word. Can you connect T and PLANET?

Your students’ sentences all start the same way. Here are three techniques that fix that overnight.

A passage from The Jungle Book to use as a mentor text, discussion starter, or writing prompt.

How many words can you find within “general”?

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.

Can your students spot the run-on sentences?

Sure, Dr. Seuss wrote for young students, but can older students analyze his writing and learn to mimic his style? THEN, they can produce Seuss-style poetry about any topic: Ancient China, the electromagnetic spectrum, Pride and Prejudice, and (yes) fraction division!

One painting of a bridge. Three robots. Who wrote it best?

What if Kylo Ren wrote a love letter to Abe Lincoln or the Sahara Desert wrote one to the Moon?

Three paragraphs about the Empire State Building. They all cover the same topic — so what makes each one different? Now combine them into one super-paragraph.