The Dracula RAFT Writing Project contains a writing project for the English/Language Arts classroom.This is a culminating project to end a unit of study on Bram Stoker’s famous novel. What is a RAFT, you might ask? RAFT is an acronym for a powerful writing strategy that provides rigor, flexibility, and variety. RAFT stands for Role, Audience, Format, and Topic. A RAFT can be implemented in all content areas, thus making it an excellent Writing Across the Curriculum resource. Young writers might pursue one of several genres of writing (expository, narrative, descriptive, argumentative or persuasive) to create one of several products (letter, television commercial, diary entry, etc.). I define this further in the packet.

The Brave New World RAFT Writing Project contains a writing project for the English/Language Arts classroom.This is a culminating project to end a unit of study on Aldous Huxley’s famous novel. What is a RAFT, you might ask? RAFT is an acronym for a powerful writing strategy that provides rigor, flexibility, and variety. RAFT stands for Role, Audience, Format, and Topic. A RAFT can be implemented in all content areas, thus making it an excellent Writing Across the Curriculum resource. Young writers might pursue one of several genres of writing (expository, narrative, descriptive, argumentative or persuasive) to create one of several products (letter, television commercial, diary entry, etc.).

This six-question activity challenges students to identify the "Big Six" British Romantic poets - Shelley, Byron, Coleridge, Blake, Wordsworth & Keats - by lines of poems they wrote. The complete assignment features lines from Ode to the West Wind, The Chimney Sweeper, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, She Walks in Beauty, and Ode to a Nightingale. Also, included: please find a short list of free online resources you might consult while planning your lessons for this topic. (If you have access to subscription databases, however, you might consider those first.) Consider downloading the activity to challenge your students to identify these six great poets!

This project contains 15 questions for younger researchers to consider when planning a trip to a new place. These questions will test students' abilities to think about geography skills like location and direction as well as provide opportunities to learn about new cultural experiences. Students will need either access to age-appropriate Internet resources or books about the countries of their choice. The final results might pair well with a bulletin board or poster display.

This packet is titled "Let's Explore America! Use a Map to Find American States, Cities, Landforms, and Bodies of Water." It includes seven assignments you can use to teach essential geography skills. Please see the full preview! This would make a great introduction to young students preparing to study the United States for the first time. You might even consider them "substitute assignments" and leave them for a substitute teacher on a day you are away from the classroom. These assignments will work well individually or as a partner assignment.

This is a bundle of six map skills assignments for Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and the Pacific Islands, North America, and South America. Each is titled respectively "Let's Explore! Use a Map to Find Countries, Capital Cities, Landforms, and Bodies of Water." These assignments include 20 questions each that require students to analyze a map of each continent for boundaries and borders, major cities, landforms, and bodies of water.

This assignment is titled "Let's Explore the Middle East! Use a Map to Find Countries, Cities, Landforms, and Bodies of Water." This assignment includes 20 questions that require students to analyze a map of the Middle East for national borders, capital cities, landforms, and bodies of water. Here are two sample questions: "In which country is Mount Demavend located?" and "Name at least three countries that border the Red Sea." This would make a great introduction to young students preparing to study world regions for the first time.

Would you like to enliven ancient history with a fun, challenging writing project? Maybe breathe new life into a science or geography lesson about volcanoes? The Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius RAFT Writing Project contains a RAFT writing project for the social studies or science classroom. This project may be used as a creative research project or as a summarizing assignment to end a unit of study on the destruction of Pompeii, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, or Ancient Rome. What is a RAFT, you might ask? RAFT is an acronym for a powerful writing strategy that provides rigor, flexibility, and variety. A RAFT can be implemented in all content areas, thus making it an excellent Writing Across the Curriculum resource. Young writers might pursue one of several genres of writing (expository, narrative, descriptive, argumentative or persuasive) to create one of several products (letter, television commercial, diary entry, etc.).

This assignment is titled “Twitter Tales: Writing Haiku, Micropoems, & Short Fiction in 280 Characters or Less.” We hear a lot these days about how our students enjoy communicating with one another using social networking services like Facebook and Twitter. This assignment allows students to write micropoems and short fiction within Twitter’s 280-character limit. This assignment requires critical thinking skills and 21st century technology skills. Students must closely scrutinize appropriate language choices and work within Twitter’s character limit to publish their work. Combining short, creative bursts of writing with this technology has popularized a new trend called Twitterature. Demand has even prompted a magazine called 7x20 where writers can publish their Twitter micropoems. The goal here is to create powerful works of literature in only a few words. What would William Carlos Williams – and other Imagists – think of “Twitterature,” a quirky, new form of micropoetry and flash fiction told in 280 characters or less? This is one of several questions I want students to consider as they strive to create powerful images, emotional pieces, and more works of short literature in this project. Is Twitter blocked at your school? Fear not. I have included some printable worksheets that can be used in the classroom as a “work-around.” The template will not look exactly like Twitter for legal reasons, but it should suffice for this project. Remind students that they still must write within the 280-character limit as one requirement for success on the project.

This is a map skills assignment for young students that teaches students how to properly use cardinal directions (north, east, south, west) and intermediate directions (northeast, northwest, southeast, southwest) with a map of Europe. So, what makes this assignment different from all of the others that you have used? The assignment is written so that students must interact with the map before they use cardinal and intermediate directions. They must first properly label the cardinal and intermediate directions on the included map's compass rose. Then, they must locate and label 15 European cities and 10 bodies of water. After successfully locating these places, there are 10 questions that require them to think about how people move from one city to another.

You are about to download a research project titled “Roman Rulers: The Good, the Bad… and the Weird.” Students must research one of the following emperors of Ancient Rome: Julius Caesar, Octavian (Augustus), Claudius, Nero, Vespasian, Titus, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, Caligula, or Commodus. They must determine the emperor’s strengths and weaknesses and their contributions to Roman life. In the assignment packet, you will find: For students: a role-playing letter for students to read as an introduction to the project, a step-by-step list of detailed instructions, research logs, and a works cited page to document their sources. For teachers: a list of required materials, a pacing guide, two rubrics, and a list of reputable online resources for students to use when they conduct their research. This project is intended as a cumulative assignment to enrich a unit on Ancient Rome. It would work best with middle school or high school students. You might modify it for mature elementary school students. Additionally, this project demands higher level critical thinking, as students must assess the importance of the emperor they have chosen. (This is not a biographical sketch.) They must also demonstrate teamwork skills, research skills, proper MLA citation, 21st century technology skills, the ability to work against a deadline, and much more.

Absolute and relative location are two basic, important geography tools that all students must master. Why not teach students these vital skills in a fun, active way? This assignment will do just that! Absolute location, of course, requires students to use latitude and longitude to give their answers. Relative location requires cardinal directions (north, south, east, west) and intermediate directions (northeast, northwest, southeast, southwest). While there are many available assignments to teach these concepts to elementary school and middle school/junior high school students, here’s one with a twist! Students will locate 20 professional soccer/European football/futbol teams using absolute and relative location. I have chosen 20 teams from six continents including clubs in India, Japan, Canada, Brazil, the Netherlands, Australia, and several more. This would be a great map assignment to introduce political map skills as it allows students to become better acquainted with nations and continents. Additionally, students might find it exciting to learn that there are soccer/European football/futbol teams on every continent but Antarctica! Included, please find the assignment with a chart for record-keeping, an answer key, a blank world map, a political world map, and an idea for an extension assignment. Plus, how about this idea for an educational technology activity? If you have Google Earth installed on your classroom computer(s), you can visit every soccer stadium included in this assignment! Simply, download the KML file included in this packet and the file should load automatically into Google Earth. Take your students on a virtual tour today. Thank you!

Absolute and relative location are two basic, important geography tools that all students must master. Why not teach students these vital skills in a fun, active way? This assignment will do just that! Absolute location, of course, requires students to use latitude and longitude to give their answers. Relative location requires cardinal directions (north, south, east, west) and intermediate directions (northeast, northwest, southeast, southwest). While there are many available assignments to teach these concepts to elementary school and middle school/junior high school students, here’s one with a twist! Students will locate all 32 NFL football teams using absolute and relative location. January 2023 update: Team names and locations have been updated. Also, it’s easier than ever to take the Google Earth tour of NFL Stadiums. This document describes 5 quick, easy steps to get started. Also, all stadiums and respective cities have been updated since last season. This would be an effective assignment near the beginning of the school year, when students are transitioning into autumn and the NFL season opens its newest season. However, its strength will help reinforce skills later in the school year as well. Included, please find the assignment with a chart for record-keeping, an answer key, a blank USA map, a political USA map, and an idea for an extension assignment. Plus, how about this idea for an educational technology twist? You can visit each and every NFL football stadium using Google Tour Builder! There is nothing to install. Simply, follow the link included in this packet and take your students on a virtual tour today.

This assignment is titled “A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The Social Network,” an excellent form of differentiated instruction to teach one of Shakespeare’s most famous comedies. We hear a lot these days about how our students enjoy communicating with one another on sites like Facebook, Foursquare, Tumblr, and Twitter. This assignment is essentially a character analysis assignment in the form of a “mock social network.” Students must imagine that characters from A Midsummer Night’s Dream have social networking pages where they post their thoughts, concerns, activities, motivations, and more. There have been many creative ways to teach A Midsummer Night’s Dream over the years including mock newspapers, mock trials, and the like. This particular project puts a 21st century spin on those assignments and allows students to express themselves in a familiar medium.

This packet features a set of 100 short writing prompts or what I like to call “daily warm-ups.” I have used these prompts successfully in a few different scenarios including bell ringer assignments, icebreakers at the beginning of the school year, and in long-term writing projects such as writing folders and portfolios. There are two main parts of this packet: (1) a four-page list of all 100 prompts which might be used as part of a writing folder assignment and (2) a set of task cards that can be easily printed, cut, and shared with students.

The following 25 prompts worked wonderfully in my language arts classes. These prompts will provide narrative and descriptive writing opportunities. For instance, there is a prompt in this packet that requires students to think about a typical Saturday and recount sequential events descriptively. Another prompt will require students to describe a perfect lunch, which will require them to think critically and logically in a creative passage. There are several possibilities here, but the real bonus is the full-color image that accompanies each question to inspire deeper thinking and colourful language choices. I have alternated prompts in this packet to allow for daily or weekly instruction possibilities. Thus, each narrative prompt is followed by a descriptive writing prompt. Why? In my classroom, I passed this assignment out as a classroom packet and one that we would use throughout the school year so students could track progress and see how they had developed as writers from the first day to the last. Please let me know how you use these prompts in your classroom.

A Christmas Carol RAFT Writing Project contains a writing project for the English/Language Arts classroom.This is a culminating project to end a unit of study on Charles Dickens’s famous novel. What is a RAFT, you might ask? RAFT is an acronym for a powerful writing strategy that provides rigor, flexibility, and variety. RAFT stands for Role, Audience, Format, and Topic. A RAFT can be implemented in all content areas, thus making it an excellent Writing Across the Curriculum resource. Young writers might pursue one of several genres of writing (expository, narrative, descriptive, argumentative or persuasive) to create one of several products (letter, television commercial, diary entry, etc.).

This PowerPoint presentation is titled “The Colosseum - Let’s Take a Tour!” I will create and upload a series of interactive PowerPoint presentations similar in structure and style to this one to help upper elementary and middle school students learn more about the world around them. The complete assignment includes (1) the PowerPoint presentation, (2) a KWL chart to activate the lesson, (3) 15 questions you can use to guide the lesson or use as a quiz afterwards, and (4) a handful of research prompts you might use to extend the lesson. This particular PowerPoint is chock full of quality information about the Colosseum. Please download the sample to see for yourself. I have also filled the presentation with high-quality color photos and clickable links to some key vocabulary terms. If you have access to Google Earth and YouTube, you will also find clickable links embedded in the document so you can take your students on a virtual field trip to see the Colosseum from above (Google Earth) and to a classroom-safe video (YouTube) offering a first-person perspective so your students can feel what it is like to be there. I envision using this PowerPoint presentation in a handful of ways: as either a classroom instruction tool on a SmartBoard or as a self-guided PowerPoint that students can access as a homework assignment.

Would you like to enliven ancient history with a fun, challenging writing project? The Code of Hammurabi RAFT Writing Project contains a RAFT writing project for the social studies classroom. This project may be used as a creative research project or as a summarizing assignment to end a unit of study on Mesopotamia, Ancient Babylon, or Hammurabi. What is a RAFT, you might ask? RAFT is an acronym for a powerful writing strategy that provides rigor, flexibility, and variety. A RAFT can be implemented in all content areas, thus making it an excellent Writing Across the Curriculum resource. Young writers might pursue one of several genres of writing (expository, narrative, descriptive, argumentative or persuasive) to create one of several products (letter, television commercial, diary entry, etc.). I define this further in the packet.

Would you like to enliven ancient history with a fun, challenging writing project? The Assassination of Julius Caesar RAFT Writing Project contains a RAFT writing project for the social studies classroom. This project may be used as a creative research project or as a summarizing assignment to end a unit of study on Caesar or Ancient Rome. What is a RAFT, you might ask? RAFT is an acronym for a powerful writing strategy that provides rigor, flexibility, and variety. A RAFT can be implemented in all content areas, thus making it an excellent Writing Across the Curriculum resource. Young writers might pursue one of several genres of writing (expository, narrative, descriptive, argumentative or persuasive) to create one of several products (letter, television commercial, diary entry, etc.). In this project, students have four writing options to choose from. They may role-play as a concerned patrician, a senator, Caesar’s wife Calpurnia, or Augustus.