CCSS ELA Standard: 4.L.3.a

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

When I see a quote, I often think, “That’s not quite right!”

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

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

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

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.

What if we rewrote a piece of writing without using certain letters?

What if we rewrote a piece of writing without using certain letters?

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

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

Let’s start with “As cold as fire.”

What if we started a sentence with the simile?

What if a students’ self-portrait was made of words that describe the student!?

What happens when we switch out a “but” with a “so”? An “and” with a “for”? How can such tiny words make such big differences?

Repeating words can be what you want, if what you want is an interesting effect. (Psst, that’s an example of anadiplosis!)

A specific technique to help students add some spice to their writing. We’ll be contrasting two ideas using synonyms.

A specific technique to help students add some spice to their writing. We’ll be using antonyms to describe the same topic!

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

Aristotle noted that positive traits and negative traits are often the same thing, but just in different amounts. The right amount is a virtue, but too much or too little and it’s a vice.

Asking students to “think creatively” won’t get you far. They won’t know how to start, they’ll get stuck with simple ideas, or they’ll just go completely wild. SCAMPER is a tool for scaffolding the process of creativity.

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.)

It’s time to turn that outline into a storyboard and then some actual slides.

Imagine a construction worker who doesn’t know the name of a screwdriver or a doctor who can’t remember what to call your neck. It’s pretty hard to communicate well without knowing the 👄 Language of the Discipline!

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