Playlist: Bookmarks
Change A Story’s Genre
What if we rewrote a story’s climax into a totally different genre?
Greekymon Studies – Round 1
What might a creature named “Ursolunascope” be like?
Parts of Speech Party: Introduction (Check)
How many ways can we use “check” in a paragraph? And can your students spot when it’s a verb, or a noun, or an adjective?
Bobbing for Apples
What is bobbing for apples like… for an apple?
A Halloween Costume Gone Wrong
Let’s go roller skating in a Halloween costume! What could possibly go wrong?
Think Like An Author: Hemingway vs Dickens
What if your students rewrote Dickens in the style of Hemingway and vice versa?
Idiom Tasks
Four fantastically terrific tasks for a weekly idiom study.
Analyze Suffixes: -en
What exactly does adding -en to a word do? Find the pattern. Then find the words that break it.
Back to School: Rewriting The Beatles’ “Help!”
Can your students come up with a one-syllable word to sum up their time away from school? And then rewrite The Beatles’ song Help!?
Analyze Suffixes: -ly, -less, and -ful
What exactly does adding -less do to a word?
Greek and Latin Word Part Paths
How can we go from Biology to Immobile?
Fancier Figurative Language: Use the Opposite
Let’s start with “As cold as fire.”
Fancier Figurative Language: Move the Simile
What if we started a sentence with the simile?
Analyze Paragraphs: Empire State Building
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.
Changing Coordinating Conjunctions
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?
Fixing Shakespearean Run-Ons
Can your students help The Bard? We’ll fix five Shakespearean run-ons in three different ways.
Writing Technique: 3 Dependent Clauses
A specific technique to help students add some spice to their writing. We’ll be writing sentences with three dependent clauses.
Writing Technique: Contrast With Synonyms
A specific technique to help students add some spice to their writing. We’ll be contrasting two ideas using synonyms.
Writing Technique: Opposite Adjectives
A specific technique to help students add some spice to their writing. We’ll be using antonyms to describe the same topic!
Story Starter: A Day At School
Students use 12 random phrases to create a story that takes place at school.
Ambiguous Sentences
Rather than just demand that students “write clearly,” we’ll explore the hazards of poorly written sentences… and maybe create one of our own!
Remixing A Holiday Poem
Let’s take a classic Christmas poem and remix it to work with another holiday!
Writing Seuss Style Poetry
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!
Plurals: An Inductive Spelling Lesson
Plural nouns in English are deliciously fascinating. Yet most plural lessons are so dull! In this experience, students are given a pile of plurals and then inductively create groups and pull out rules and patterns.
Paragraphs: Systems of Sentences
Blow up a paragraph into individual sentences. Now reassemble it. The clues hiding in each sentence will surprise you.
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.
What’s In My Brain: Painting vs Painting
Two columns of sentences. Something is different about them. Can you figure out the rule?
What’s In My Brain: Cute Baby vs Fast Cheetah
Can students spot similes vs metaphors?
What’s In My Brain – Independent vs Dependent
These clauses are sorted into two groups. What’s the rule? No definitions given — just examples.
Simple or Compound Sentences – What’s In My Brain?
Can your students spot simple sentences vs compound sentences?
Complex or Compound – What’s In My Brain
Can your class spot the complex sentences vs compound sentences?
Sets of Idioms
Why do we say ‘break a leg’? Five themed sets of idioms your students will actually remember.
What’s In My Brain: Progressive vs Simple Tenses
Will your students notice progressive tense vs simple tense?
What’s In My Brain – The Park vs The Museum
We’re looking at the past progressive tense and the simple past tense.
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!
Pronouns With Too Many Antecedents
What happens when a pronoun could refer to more than one noun? Big problems!
What Would Poetry Think About Prose?
Poetry and Prose meet at a party. What would they say to each other? How would they feel about each other’s style?
Describing Author’s Voice
What if… Edgar Allen Poe wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland?
Synonym Graphs
So, which is happiest: happy, joyful, or ecstatic? Which is most temporary?
Propaganda and Logical Fallacies
Let’s see how propaganda techniques can make even something great seem bad.
Academic Love Letters
What if Kylo Ren wrote a love letter to Abe Lincoln or the Sahara Desert wrote one to the Moon?
Studying and Remixing “The Raven”
Ready to push kids beyond the boring, old ABAB rhyme scheme and into something a bit more complex?
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.
“Its Big Day” – A Children’s Story About Its and It’s
Let’s spice up a typically dull lesson about the difference between “its” and “it’s” by asking students to write a children’s story about the adventures of a critter named It.
Literary Technique: Juxtaposition
Put a grumpy character next to a joyful one and they make each other stand out even more. Opposites are powerful!
Ways to Start a Sentence – Level 1
‘Add more variety!’ teachers say. But how? This lesson gives students actual techniques instead of vague advice.
Greekymon
Rather than just memorizing word parts, students will use those word parts to create four possible products.
Writing Summaries in Haiku
Let’s write a summary. A very short summary. With VERY strict rules.
Teach Non-Fiction Writing Structure With Fractals
Did you ever notice that the structure of an essay is very similar to the structure of a paragraph? Hmm…
Fancier Figurative Language: Start with a Cliche
We’ll start with the cliché “as cold as ice” and go somewhere much more interesting.
Teaching Criticism
For TeachersAsk students to go beyond “I don’t like it” and form critical opinions based on a set of criteria. Students can produce written arguments or turn their opinion into oral presentations.
Writing Clear Directions
Can you write directions so clear that a group of kids can put a toy together with no illustrations?
Greek and Latin Dinosaur Names
Let’s create a new dinosaur using Greek and Latin stems!
Better Stories Part 1: The Big Idea
We open our unit on narrative writing with a big idea: “structure increases creativity.” I show how this is true by bringing in examples from across all disciplines.