English Lesson Plans and Activities
Title: Class Zoophabet 
Grade level: Cycle 2 and 3
Objectives: – Help students practice synonyms and descriptive words.
-Students will write a class Zoophabet
Materials: Zoophabet by Avis Harley , smartboard if available , computers if available or dictionaries and thesaurus.
Brief Description: This lesson should take approximately 1 hour. Begin by reading Zoophabet as a class. Point out how the poem lists animals in alphabetical order. Give each student a copy of the poem to follow along. Point out to students some highlighted words they may not know. Explain that these words are synonyms for more popular words that we should try to incorporate into our writing. For example: seek instead of look for, lightning like instead of fast etc.
Next, assign one letter to each student (give out two if not enough students). Give them describe your animal worksheet if you wish. Have them use laptops to research or even dictionaries will work as well. If you have a smart board, show them an example of a filled out one. When students are finished have some of them share what they wrote and which animal they choose. Next, work on synonym webs (optional) to help find synonyms they can use to describe their animal and write their own sentence. Their sentences must start with the animal they choose and must use one or two of the synonyms they found. Once students have completed this task, allow them to start writing their sentences. Walk around to assist them. When everyone is finished have each student read out their sentence to make a class Zoophabet!
Cycle 1 and 2: Omit the synonym web and have them focus more on writing a sentence that describes the animal. Have them draw pictures of their animals if there is still time.
High School: Have students try and rhyme their sentences with the person with the letter after them. Alternatively, they can try to describe their animals using synonyms that begin with the same letter. For example, Dragonflies dazzle and dodge.
Differentiation: You can pair up some students to work together if it appears it might be too difficult for them to do alone.
My Missing Teacher
For grades: 1-11
When the teacher is not present, students may be curious where he/she went. Having students write a short story as to where their teacher went could be an amusing way to allow students to explore their own imagination. The teacher and students would have a fun time reading these papers when the teachers gets back.
Below is a template for this activity, which was taken taken from: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/My-Teacher-is-Missing-Writing-Activity-251885
In elementary classrooms, a substitute teacher could introduce this activity by reading the book below:
