CCSS ELA Standard: 3.L.5

What are examples of unseen Power? And can invisible power be more powerful than visible power?

Dust can mean “remove dust” but also “add more dust!”

Let’s help William Shakespeare with his use of repetition.

Let’s take a starting phrase about St. Patrick’s Day and get specific. No, even more specific!

Let’s write a holiday song about order and chaos!

Let’s write the cleverest Mother’s Day cards you’ve ever seen!

Let’s make this simile about a strong uncle even more specific.

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.

Now let’s try the Path Cipher – a cipher that mixes things up even more than Zig Zag did.

An old photograph. A holiday scene. Pick one object in the picture and write from its point of view.

So what could you do with a Universal Theme of Power? Well, here’s an introduction that will get your students’ brains sweating.

Does the antonym of an antonym bring us back to the same meaning?

Let’s start with “As cold as fire.”

What if we started a sentence with the simile?

Let’s take a classic Christmas poem and remix it to work with another holiday!

Can you think of times when power is unseen, but we can clearly see its effects?

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.

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.

So, which is happiest: happy, joyful, or ecstatic? Which is most temporary?

Get better at giving presentations by studying the greats!

How can one idea pull in opposite directions, being both true and false or right and wrong at the same time? It’s time to explore Paradoxes!

Let’s make valentines with an educational twist!

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