Students will practice their knowledge of context clues and connotation by studying Lewis Carroll's famous poem "The Jabberwocky." There are two activities in this worksheet which both lend themselves to great discussions. Students enjoy this poem and it is a great way to explain how connotation and context clues work together (the way the words make us feel help us understand what they mean). It is also great for teaching how certain SOUNDS can even make us feel a certain way. This is important in any poetry unit. Basically there are a lot of fun things to do with this poem and a lot of different directions to take it.

An engaging presentation where students learn about context clues through inquiry and then identify types at the end of the lesson instead of the beginning. Students will discover they can define words such as "bellwether" and "saxicolous" through careful reading and context clues. The PowerPoint presentation includes an attention grabber, an activity, and notes. Can be completed in as short as 15 minutes or longer depending on your students' background knowledge and how in depth you decide to take the discussion. Includes a fun worksheet that uses Lewis Carroll famous poem, "The Jabberwocky" to put context clues into action. Great way to assess what the student's have learned.

Fun pictures to help get kids writing. My students in the past responded well to these pictures (i.e. giraffes waterskiing, iceclimbers, etc). They can be used in a variety of assignments and are in an easy to edit PowerPoint format.

I used this in my classroom to make the rules more memorable and fun for my students. The file is in word so feel free to edit as needed. My philosophy was simple, easy to remember, positively stated rules.

This is one of my favorite units. I did it almost every year I was teaching and always had a good response. It works well because the writing assignment involves choice and authenticity. They aren’t writing what you tell them to write and they aren’t writing to you. This works great for a persuasive writing unit in English or a government unit in U.S. History. Students write official letters to their government representatives. Included in this set is a page for the teacher explaining how I taught this unit, a page on ethos/pathos/logos that can be used as a handout or a lesson, a planning page that guides the student's research and outline, a letter format page to help the student understand how to write an official letter, and a peer edit page for the revising process.

9 page packet for supplemental use when teaching the short story “To Build a Fire.” I used this with my students when I taught 8th grade. We read this story at the beginning of the year. Page 1 & 2: Comparing “To Build a Fire” with the short story “The Law of Life.” Page 3: Pre-reading activity Pages 4-8: During the story activities including vocabulary, reading strategies, and foreshadowing lesson and practice page. Page 9: During/after reading characterization analysis I have included both a PDF version and a word doc version for editing.

This is designed to be used near the beginning of a poetry unit for middle school. It could be used as an introduction to figurative language, specifically similes and metaphors. Students define simile and metaphor, example famous examples, and then create their own, modeling after the professional. They then examine two short poems by Langston Hughes, putting what they learned into practice. They will identify and examine, analyzing why mostly similes are used in one poem while Hughes relies heavily on metaphors in the other. In the lesson, the teacher should work with the student to understand the purpose of similes and metaphors in general and how they relate to these poems. I have included both a PDF and a word document version for editing.