English Language Arts Grade 1 [2011]

• A Journal for Corduroy: Responding to Literature
  This lesson from ReadWriteThink leads first-grade students to reflect on and respond to literature through journal writing. Students read books in the Corduroy series and interact with a stuffed bear to personalize their experiences. They also record their own adventures with Corduroy, share their stories with the class, and create a class book using the computer.
• Adventures in Nonfiction: A Guided Inquiry Journey
  This lesson acquaints students with multiple nonfiction resources and helps them to think about what they want to learn during research.
• All Together Now: Collaborations in Poetry Writing
  This set of 3 lesson plans from EDSITEment makes poetry exciting for students as they listen to, write, and recite poems that are sure to please. By the end of these lessons, students should be able to create lines of poetry in response to poems read aloud, identify musical elements of literary language, and recite short poems or excerpts.
• Collaborative Stories 2: Revising
  Using a story which has been written collaboratively, students engage in a whole-group revising process by having each student add a sentence at a time. The teacher leads this shared-revising activity to help students consider story content. Students begin by reading their collaborative story and then discuss ways of making changes. Then, after revisions have been made, they reread the story as a group. Finally, students come to a consensus on a title for their story.
• Draw a Story: Stepping From Pictures to Writing
  In this ReadWriteThink lesson, students draw a series of pictures that tell a simple story that includes character action, problem and solution. They 'read' their story to others, transcribe it into writing, and create an accordion book with the drawings and writing. The activity supports the transition from oral to written storytelling.
• Egyptian Symbols and Figures: Hieroglyphs
  This lesson plan from EDSITEment introduces students to the writing, art, and religious beliefs of ancient Egypt through hieroglyphs, one of the oldest writing systems in the world, and through tomb paintings. The lesson plan is in two parts. In this first lesson, the class creates a pictorial alphabet of its own and then learns and uses the symbols of the Egyptian hieroglyphic alphabet. In the second lesson, Egyptian Symbols and Figures: Scroll Painting, students identify and represent in their own drawings figures from the Book of the Dead, a funeral text written on papyrus and carved on the walls of tombs to help guide the deceased through the afterlife.
• Egyptian Symbols and Figures: Scroll Paintings
  This lesson plan from EDSITEment introduces students to the writing, art, and religious beliefs of ancient Egypt through hieroglyphs, one of the oldest writing systems in the world, and through tomb paintings. The lesson plan is in two parts. In this second lesson, students identify and represent in their own drawings figures from the Book of the Dead, a funeral text written on papyrus and carved on the walls of tombs to help guide the deceased through the afterlife. In the first lesson, Egyptian Symbols and Figures: Hieroglyphs, the class creates a pictorial alphabet of its own and then learns and uses the symbols of the Egyptian hieroglyphic alphabet.
• If You Were a Pioneer on the Oregon Trail
  In this lesson from EDSITEment, students compare imagined travel experiences of their own with the actual experiences of 19th-century pioneers. After creating, as a class, oral stories about contemporary cross-country journeys, students learn about the experiences of the emigrants who traveled on the Oregon Trail. They then create works of historical fiction in the form of picture books, drawing upon the information they have learned.
• Sentence Quest
  In this lesson from ReadWriteThink, students learn the criteria for a sentence by manipulating word cards, then collaborate to write and illustrate complete, descriptive sentences. Finally, students work in groups using descriptive words and phrases to try to create the longest sentence they can.