Playlist: 5/6 ELA
Change can be positive and negative
A beaver’s dam is a nice home and a terrible flood. Students pick a change and note how it can be both positive and negative.
Change: The Caterpillar’s Bargain
To become a butterfly, a caterpillar doesn’t just sprout wings — inside the cocoon it dissolves into liquid first, almost nothing left, then rebuilds. Would you trade everything you are now to become something far greater?
Change: The Sealed Jar
You love a flower so much you seal it in a jar to keep it exactly as it is, forever. A month later it’s brown and crumbling. Did sealing it stop the change, or just hide it?
Change: The Tree’s Scar
A nail got hammered into a young tree. The tree didn’t push it out — it grew around it, sealing the nail inside a knot of new wood. Was that change the tree healing, or the tree getting damaged?
Change: One Domino
You nudge one domino. It tips the next, which tips two more, which tip four, until a thousand have fallen. Did you cause one change, or a thousand?
Change: Canyon vs. Earthquake
Change can be slow or fast, and a different perspective can reveal a longer buildup behind a sudden event.
Student Introductions With Depth, Complexity, and Frames: Level Two
Once students know the prompts of Depth and Complexity, let’s take them much higher up Bloom’s Taxonomy.
Super Specific Similes – Slimy Broccoli
Start with a basic simile. Now make it more specific. Now even more. Watch how much better writing gets with each round.
Introducing Universal Theme of Change
Everything changes. But how does it change? Students brainstorm dozens of examples and boil them down to one big idea.
Fancier Figurative Language: Move the Simile
What if we started a sentence with the simile?
Change Leads to More Change
Can you think of a time in your life when “Change lead to more change?”
Fancier Figurative Language: Advanced Repetition
Is your students’ use of repetition limited to, “The girl was very, very, very fast.”? Let’s borrow some ideas from Shakespeare!
Advanced Alliteration and Consonance
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.
Student Introductions With Depth and Frames
Want to introduce the tools of Depth and Complexity and learn more about your students and introduce the Frame graphic organizer? Have I got the activity for you!
Jabberwocky and Context Clues
Context clues lessons can be a disaster. Here, we expose students to a delightful classic packed with nonsense words (“Jabberwocky”) and ask them to decipher the meanings and parts of speech. Then, it’s only natural for students to write their own nonsense poems.