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Go Beyond “Identify Figurative Language”

For Teachers

So students can identify a simile, metaphor, and hyperbole. What next?

Greekymon Studies – Round 1

What might a creature named “Ursolunascope” be like?

Going Beyond “Name That Genre!”

For Teachers

Naming the genre is step one. But what comes after that? Here’s how to push students past identification into real analysis.

Updating Old Questions: Conflict and Character Change

For Teachers

I update an old question about conflict and character change in the story Hatchet.

What If… Unreliable Water?

What would the consequences be if a town’s tap water became… unreliable?

Phrases to Join a Discussion

Want your classroom discussions to go a bit more smoothly? Train students to use a few simple phrases and it’ll make all the difference in the world.

Olympics: Winter vs Summer Medal Count

Which country has a great balance between their summer and winter Olympic medals?

Plant Adaptation Tournament

Who will win in a tournament of eight plants with Interesting adaptations!?

Writing in Pilish

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

Looping Grid Art

Pick a few numbers, draw some corresponding lines on grid paper, and you’ll end up with some interesting, looping math-y art!

Analyze Characters Using Philosophy

What is the Brick Pig’s philosophy? How would he apply it to the characters in Harry Potter?

Virtue or Vice?

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.

Do Narrators Have Too Much Power?

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!?

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!

The Resiliency Tournament

Your students will set up a tournament to determine which person or character best demonstrated resiliency.

Showing A Character’s Trait

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

Multiple Meaning Matcher – Introduction

Your students will try to match up definitions that belong to the same homophone in this brain-boggling vocab puzzle.

Climbing Bloom’s with Depth and Complexity

For Teachers

Bloom’s tells you how high to aim. Depth and Complexity tells you where to look. Combine them and things get interesting.

Analyze Character Change with Depth and Complexity

Anyone can say a character changed. Your students will prove it: four details from the beginning, four from the end, and the two traits those details point to.

Elements of The Fantasy Genre

Every fantasy story has patterns hiding underneath the magic. Once your students see the elements, they’ll spot them everywhere — and use them in their own writing.

Literary Technique: Juxtaposition

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

Greekymon

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

Motivation and Moral Development

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

Creating A Classroom Motto

Starting with specific examples of fantastic classroom behavior, your class will end up with one sentence summing up their expectations. It’s a classroom motto!

Writing Summaries in Haiku

Let’s write a summary. A very short summary. With VERY strict rules.