ALEX Resources

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Lesson Plans (15)	Interactives/Games (1)
Learning Activities (3)

ALEX Lesson Plans

Title: Writing for Catharsis: How Do We Survive?
Description: This lesson is an internet-based inquiry into the Virginia Tech Massacre and Nikki Giovanni’s poetic response. This lesson ties informative reading and inquiry with the craft of poetry and the role of poetry as catharsis. Students will also understand firsthand the difference in reading a poem and the experiencing it as a public performance.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (7) 7:

7 ) Compare and contrast a written story, drama, or poem to its audio, filmed, staged, or multimedia version, analyzing the effects of techniques unique to each medium (e.g., lighting, sound, color, or camera focus and angles in a film). [RL.7.7]

Subject: English Language Arts (7)
Title: Writing for Catharsis: How Do We Survive?
Description: This lesson is an internet-based inquiry into the Virginia Tech Massacre and Nikki Giovanni’s poetic response. This lesson ties informative reading and inquiry with the craft of poetry and the role of poetry as catharsis. Students will also understand firsthand the difference in reading a poem and the experiencing it as a public performance.

Title: Interactive Poetry - Learning Poetic Elements and Structure Through Exploration
Description: This is an online exploration poetry lesson. Students will navigate through the interactive PowerPoint presentation and complete different tasks while acquiring knowledge on the various aspects of poetry. This is a College- and Career-Ready Standards showcase lesson plan.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (7) 5:

5 ) Analyze how a drama's or poem's form or structure (e.g., soliloquy, sonnet) contributes to its meaning. [RL.7.5]

Subject: English Language Arts (4 - 7)
Title: Interactive Poetry - Learning Poetic Elements and Structure Through Exploration
Description: This is an online exploration poetry lesson. Students will navigate through the interactive PowerPoint presentation and complete different tasks while acquiring knowledge on the various aspects of poetry. This is a College- and Career-Ready Standards showcase lesson plan.

Title: Analyzing and Recreating Poetry with William Wordsworth
Description: This language arts lesson incorporates collaboration and analysis of poetry. The students will utilize drawing and analysis. The lesson also incorporates synthesis by having the students recreate Wordsworth's poem.The students will recreate personal photos on Aviary to make them more vivid.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (7) 4:

4 ) Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the impact of rhymes and other repetitions of sounds (e.g., alliteration) on a specific verse or stanza of a poem or section of a story or drama. [RL.7.4]

Subject: English Language Arts (7 - 9), or Technology Education (6 - 8)
Title: Analyzing and Recreating Poetry with William Wordsworth
Description: This language arts lesson incorporates collaboration and analysis of poetry. The students will utilize drawing and analysis. The lesson also incorporates synthesis by having the students recreate Wordsworth's poem.The students will recreate personal photos on Aviary to make them more vivid.

Title: All About Us: Writing and Presenting Poetry
Description: In this lesson students write a poem about their class and classmates. Students then transfer their poems to individual presentation slides which are combined with their classmates' slides to create a class slideshow presentation. This presentation can be printed to create a class ABC book.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (7) 5:

5 ) Analyze how a drama's or poem's form or structure (e.g., soliloquy, sonnet) contributes to its meaning. [RL.7.5]

Subject: English Language Arts (7), or Technology Education (6 - 8)
Title: All About Us: Writing and Presenting Poetry
Description: In this lesson students write a poem about their class and classmates. Students then transfer their poems to individual presentation slides which are combined with their classmates' slides to create a class slideshow presentation. This presentation can be printed to create a class ABC book.

Thinkfinity Lesson Plans

Title: The Reading Performance: Understanding Fluency Through Oral Interpretation
Description: Students discuss prosody, gain a new appreciation for literature intended for oral performance, and participate in activities that instill the value of technology in shaping their appreciation of literature.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (8) 35:

35 ) Adapt speech to a variety of contexts and tasks, demonstrating command of formal English when indicated or appropriate. (See Grade 8 Language standards 36 and 38 for specific expectations.) [SL.8.6]

Subject: Language Arts
Title: The Reading Performance: Understanding Fluency Through Oral Interpretation
Description: Students discuss prosody, gain a new appreciation for literature intended for oral performance, and participate in activities that instill the value of technology in shaping their appreciation of literature.
Thinkfinity Partner: ReadWriteThink
Grade Span: 6,7,8

Title: Cosmic Oranges: Observation and Inquiry Through Descriptive Writing and Art
Description: Students will eat up this lesson about oranges as they practice the skills that help them investigate and make detailed observations for descriptive purposes.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (8) 40:

40 ) Demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships, and nuances in word meanings. [L.8.5]

a. Interpret figures of speech (e.g. verbal irony, puns) in context. [L.8.5a]

b. Use the relationship between particular words to better understand each of the words. [L.8.5b]

c. Distinguish among the connotations (associations) of words with similar denotations (definitions) (e.g., bullheaded, willful, firm, persistent, resolute). [L.8.5c]

Subject: Language Arts
Title: Cosmic Oranges: Observation and Inquiry Through Descriptive Writing and Art
Description: Students will eat up this lesson about oranges as they practice the skills that help them investigate and make detailed observations for descriptive purposes.
Thinkfinity Partner: ReadWriteThink
Grade Span: 6,7,8

Title: Can It Be?
Description: In this lesson, one of a multi-part unit from Illuminations, students participate in activities in which they focus on connections between mathematics and children s literature. They listen to the story The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster, and then explore and interpret the concept of averages.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (8) 9:

9 ) By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, at the high end of Grades 6-8 text complexity band independently and proficiently. [RL.8.10]

Subject: Language Arts,Mathematics
Title: Can It Be?
Description: In this lesson, one of a multi-part unit from Illuminations, students participate in activities in which they focus on connections between mathematics and children s literature. They listen to the story The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster, and then explore and interpret the concept of averages.
Thinkfinity Partner: Illuminations
Grade Span: 6,7,8

Title: In the Poet's Shoes: Performing Poetry and Building Meaning
Description: Students take poetic license when they interpret William Carlos William's poem '' The Red Wheelbarrow'' to help create a poem of their own.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (8) 35:

35 ) Adapt speech to a variety of contexts and tasks, demonstrating command of formal English when indicated or appropriate. (See Grade 8 Language standards 36 and 38 for specific expectations.) [SL.8.6]

Subject: Language Arts
Title: In the Poet's Shoes: Performing Poetry and Building Meaning
Description: Students take poetic license when they interpret William Carlos William's poem '' The Red Wheelbarrow'' to help create a poem of their own.
Thinkfinity Partner: ReadWriteThink
Grade Span: 6,7,8

Title: Analyzing Advice as an Introduction to Shakespeare
Description: Popular culture provides an introduction to Shakespeare's poetic devices in this lesson, which asks students to explore an excerpt from Shakespeare's Hamlet.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (8) 9:

9 ) By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, at the high end of Grades 6-8 text complexity band independently and proficiently. [RL.8.10]

Subject: Language Arts
Title: Analyzing Advice as an Introduction to Shakespeare
Description: Popular culture provides an introduction to Shakespeare's poetic devices in this lesson, which asks students to explore an excerpt from Shakespeare's Hamlet.
Thinkfinity Partner: ReadWriteThink
Grade Span: 6,7,8

Title: Using the Four-Square Strategy to Define and Identify Poetic Terms
Description: How do poets play with language? Students will explore some answers to this question as they search through poems for examples of alliteration, assonance, simile, and rhyme.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (8) 28:

28 ) Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research. [W.8.9]

a. Apply Grade 8 Reading standards to literature (e.g., "Analyze how a modern work of fiction draws on themes, patterns of events, or character types from myths, traditional stories, or religious works such as the Bible, including describing how the material is rendered new"). [W.8.9a]

b. Apply Grade 8 Reading standards to literary nonfiction (e.g., "Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, assessing whether the reasoning is sound and the evidence is relevant and sufficient; recognize when irrelevant evidence is introduced"). [W.8.9b]

Subject: Language Arts
Title: Using the Four-Square Strategy to Define and Identify Poetic Terms
Description: How do poets play with language? Students will explore some answers to this question as they search through poems for examples of alliteration, assonance, simile, and rhyme.
Thinkfinity Partner: ReadWriteThink
Grade Span: 6,7,8

Title: The World of Haiku
Description: In this lesson, from EDSITEment, students explore the traditions and conventions of haiku, comparing this classic form of Japanese poetry to a related genre of Japanese visual art and composing haiku of their own.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (8) 9:

9 ) By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, at the high end of Grades 6-8 text complexity band independently and proficiently. [RL.8.10]

Subject: Social Studies,Language Arts,Arts
Title: The World of Haiku
Description: In this lesson, from EDSITEment, students explore the traditions and conventions of haiku, comparing this classic form of Japanese poetry to a related genre of Japanese visual art and composing haiku of their own.
Thinkfinity Partner: EDSITEment
Grade Span: 6,7,8

Title: Modeling Reading and Analysis Processes with the Works of Edgar Allan Poe
Description: Explore reading strategies using Edgar Allan Poes The Raven and other works. Students read Poesworks in both large- and small-group readings then conclude with a variety of projects.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (8) 41:

41 ) Acquire and use accurately grade-appropriate general academic and domain-specific words and phrases; gather vocabulary knowledge when considering a word or phrase important to comprehension or expression. [L.8.6]

Subject: Language Arts
Title: Modeling Reading and Analysis Processes with the Works of Edgar Allan Poe
Description: Explore reading strategies using Edgar Allan Poes The Raven and other works. Students read Poesworks in both large- and small-group readings then conclude with a variety of projects.
Thinkfinity Partner: ReadWriteThink
Grade Span: 6,7,8

Title: The Poet's Voice: Langston Hughes and You
Description: This unit of seven lessons, from EDSITEment, introduces students to a poet's voice. Students develop a general definition of voice in poetry, and analyze and appreciate the poetic voice of Langston Hughes in particular. Included are writing and discussion activities, in which students either write a poem expressing their own voice (as developed in a journal), or write about one of the qualities of Langston Hughes's poetic voice (as explored in class discussion).
Standard(s):
[SS2010] USS6 (6) 4:

4 ) Identify cultural and economic developments in the United States from 1900 through the 1930s.

• Describing the impact of various writers, musicians, and artists on American culture during the Harlem Renaissance and the Jazz Age

Examples: Langston Hughes, Louis Armstrong, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Andrew Wyeth, Frederic Remington, W. C. Handy, Erskine Hawkins, George Gershwin, Zora Neale Hurston (Alabama)

• Identifying contributions of turn-of-the-century inventors

Examples: George Washington Carver, Henry Ford, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Alva Edison, Wilbur and Orville Wright (Alabama)

• Describing the emergence of the modern woman during the early 1900s

Examples: Amelia Earhart, Zelda Fitzgerald, Helen Keller, Susan B. Anthony, Margaret Washington, suffragettes, suffragists, flappers (Alabama)

• Identifying notable persons of the early 1900s

Examples: Babe Ruth, Charles A. Lindbergh, W. E. B. Du Bois, John T. Scopes (Alabama)

• Comparing results of the economic policies of the Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover Administrations

Examples: higher wages, increase in consumer goods, collapse of farm economy, extension of personal credit, stock market crash, Immigration Act of 1924

Subject: Language Arts,Social Studies
Title: The Poet's Voice: Langston Hughes and You
Description: This unit of seven lessons, from EDSITEment, introduces students to a poet's voice. Students develop a general definition of voice in poetry, and analyze and appreciate the poetic voice of Langston Hughes in particular. Included are writing and discussion activities, in which students either write a poem expressing their own voice (as developed in a journal), or write about one of the qualities of Langston Hughes's poetic voice (as explored in class discussion).
Thinkfinity Partner: EDSITEment
Grade Span: 6,7,8

Title: Poems That Tell a Story: Narrative and Persona in the Poetry of Robert Frost
Description: In this four-lesson unit, from EDSITEment, students read, discuss, and analyze selected poems by Robert Frost. The activities that make up this unit encourage students to draw inferences about a poem's speaker based on evidence contained within the poem and to gather evidence supporting those inferences.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (8) 29:

29 ) Write routinely over extended time frames, including time for research, reflection, and revision, and shorter time frames such as a single sitting or a day or two for a range of discipline-specific tasks, purposes, and audiences. [W.8.10]

Subject: Language Arts
Title: Poems That Tell a Story: Narrative and Persona in the Poetry of Robert Frost
Description: In this four-lesson unit, from EDSITEment, students read, discuss, and analyze selected poems by Robert Frost. The activities that make up this unit encourage students to draw inferences about a poem's speaker based on evidence contained within the poem and to gather evidence supporting those inferences.
Thinkfinity Partner: EDSITEment
Grade Span: 6,7,8

Title: The Statue of Liberty: Bringing the ''New Colossus'' to America
Description: In this lesson, from EDSITEment, students learn about the effort to convince a skeptical American public to contribute to the effort to erect a pedestal and to bring the Statue of Liberty to New York. The activities in this lesson guide students through an investigation of primary historical documents and an analysis of the poem The New Colossus, written by the nineteenth-century poet Emma Lazarus.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (8) 20:

20 ) Write arguments to support claims with clear reasons and relevant evidence. [W.8.1]

a. Introduce claim(s), acknowledge and distinguish the claim(s) from alternate or opposing claims, and organize the reasons and evidence logically. [W.8.1a]

b. Support claim(s) with logical reasoning and relevant evidence, using accurate, credible sources and demonstrating an understanding of the topic or text. [W.8.1b]

c. Use words, phrases, and clauses to create cohesion and clarify the relationships among claim(s), counterclaims, reasons, and evidence. [W.8.1c]

d. Establish and maintain a formal style. [W.8.1d]

e. Provide a concluding statement or section that follows from and supports the argument presented. [W.8.1e]

Subject: Language Arts,Social Studies
Title: The Statue of Liberty: Bringing the ''New Colossus'' to America
Description: In this lesson, from EDSITEment, students learn about the effort to convince a skeptical American public to contribute to the effort to erect a pedestal and to bring the Statue of Liberty to New York. The activities in this lesson guide students through an investigation of primary historical documents and an analysis of the poem The New Colossus, written by the nineteenth-century poet Emma Lazarus.
Thinkfinity Partner: EDSITEment
Grade Span: 6,7,8

ALEX Learning Activities

Title: The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes
Description: This video is an excellent companion to the poem for visual and auditory learners.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (7) 16:

16 ) Compare and contrast a text to an audio, video, or multimedia version of the text, analyzing each medium's portrayal of the subject (e.g., how the delivery of a speech affects the impact of the words). [RI.7.7]

Subject: English Language Arts (7)
Title: The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes
Description: This video is an excellent companion to the poem for visual and auditory learners.

Title: Writing Stylized Poetry
Description: This website not only defines highly-stylized poetry types such as haiku, sonnet, tanka, etc, but also counts the syllables of poems students compose on the website. It also has a small grammar resource.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (7) 5:

5 ) Analyze how a drama's or poem's form or structure (e.g., soliloquy, sonnet) contributes to its meaning. [RL.7.5]

Subject: English Language Arts (7)
Title: Writing Stylized Poetry
Description: This website not only defines highly-stylized poetry types such as haiku, sonnet, tanka, etc, but also counts the syllables of poems students compose on the website. It also has a small grammar resource.

Title: Playing with Poetry the Interactive Way
Description: This interactive activity challenges students to write haikus, free verse, limericks, and more.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (8) 9:

9 ) By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, at the high end of Grades 6-8 text complexity band independently and proficiently. [RL.8.10]

Subject: English Language Arts (6 - 8)
Title: Playing with Poetry the Interactive Way
Description: This interactive activity challenges students to write haikus, free verse, limericks, and more.

ALEX Learning Activities: 3

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Thinkfinity Interactive Games

Title: What Makes a Poem an Epic?
Description: This student interactive, from an EDSITEment lesson, prompts students to identify examples of the epic hero cycle from a story with which they are familiar.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (8) 30:

30 ) Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on Grade 8 topics, texts, and issues, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly. [SL.8.1]

a. Come to discussions prepared, having read or researched material under study; explicitly draw on that preparation by referring to evidence on the topic, text, or issue to probe and reflect on ideas under discussion. [SL.8.1a]

b. Follow rules for collegial discussions and decision-making, track progress toward specific goals and deadlines, and define individual roles as needed. [SL.8.1b]

c. Pose questions that connect the ideas of several speakers and respond to others' questions and comments with relevant evidence, observations, and ideas. [SL.8.1c]

d. Acknowledge new information expressed by others, and, when warranted, qualify or justify their own views in light of the evidence presented. [SL.8.1d]

Subject: Language Arts, Social Studies
Title: What Makes a Poem an Epic?
Description: This student interactive, from an EDSITEment lesson, prompts students to identify examples of the epic hero cycle from a story with which they are familiar.
Thinkfinity Partner: EDSITEment
Grade Span: 6,7,8

Thinkfinity Learning Activities

Title: Star Wars creator George Lucas was born in 1944.
Description: Students use the Hero's Journey interactive to describe how Luke Skywalker meets each stage of his journey, and then brainstorm other works that use the formula.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (8) 29:

29 ) Write routinely over extended time frames, including time for research, reflection, and revision, and shorter time frames such as a single sitting or a day or two for a range of discipline-specific tasks, purposes, and audiences. [W.8.10]

Subject: Language Arts
Title: Star Wars creator George Lucas was born in 1944.
Description: Students use the Hero's Journey interactive to describe how Luke Skywalker meets each stage of his journey, and then brainstorm other works that use the formula.
Thinkfinity Partner: ReadWriteThink
Grade Span: 7,8,9,10,11,12

Title: April is National Poetry Month!
Description: Students are assigned to be '' poets of the day'' and are provided several models to create, illustrate, and present their different poems to the class.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (8) 29:

29 ) Write routinely over extended time frames, including time for research, reflection, and revision, and shorter time frames such as a single sitting or a day or two for a range of discipline-specific tasks, purposes, and audiences. [W.8.10]

Subject: Language Arts
Title: April is National Poetry Month!
Description: Students are assigned to be '' poets of the day'' and are provided several models to create, illustrate, and present their different poems to the class.
Thinkfinity Partner: ReadWriteThink
Grade Span: K,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12