Ideas for Language Arts Unit

Idea #1
Since my first grade class is working on writing narratives about horses, I thought this would be a great opportunity to do some research on computers. Students could then also put all their new found information into a book. They could type up different pages, differentiating between different topics about horses. This would not only have them learning about horses, but about how a story is written and how to use the internet for research. Student's could also take this one step further and create a wiki with the help of a teacher so everyone else online could see their work.

Idea #2
An idea for a fifth grade class would be to have them create their own websites. Since in fifth grade students study the American Revolution, they could base their websites around biographies of different important people during that time period. Each student could be assigned a different person and would be responsible for researching and reporting back to the class about that figure in history. Then all biographies could be posted online for all to see and learn from. You could even go a step further, and have it so that each week there is a new famous historical figure "in the spotlight" and is posted on the school website for instance.

Idea # 3
An idea for a second or third grade class could incorporate blogging into the curriculum. The classes would be learning about correct grammar usage and mechanics. Student's could blog a weekly writing assignment (that of which would vary every week and be assigned by the teacher) and have a partner that could respond to the blog stating what they found wrong in their partners writing, or what could be improved ect. This would be like peer advising but using a blog to do it. The weekly writing would improve student's writing skills, and peer revising would improve revision and editing skills as well.

Idea #4
A first grade class might be learning about the life cycle of a butterfly. The teacher could take digital pictures of each stage of a butterfly's life span. She could then print them out and have student's organize them into the right order and write about what is happening in each picture. This could be done with more than just a butterfly, but with life processes or anything really that goes through stages. This assignment could be altered to be used in an older classroom where the students themselves goes out and takes the pictures.

Idea #5
Students in a 7th grade classroom could incorporate video technology into their curriculum through their studies of plays. Normally in 7th grade student's read some of Shakespeare's plays. To involve student's more, you could record student's acting out certain parts of the play. This might encourage them to read into the play more to figure out how they would act. It would also be fun to use as a tool when teaching the next years class. You could tape some of the most important scenes in a play and show them to a new class to prepare them for reading and acting Shakespeare's plays out.