Language Instruction Lesson Plans

Take a calming walk through nature in this ELD instructional activity. With three Houghton-Mifflin stories ("Henry and Mudge and the Starry Night," "Exploring Parks with Ranger Dockett," "Around the Pond"), readers compare and contrast details, as well as separate fact from opinion. Differentiated instruction between Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced levels provides increasingly challenging reading and writing ELD standards.

Explore anthills, bat and bird baseball, and the world of safety with these three Houghton-Mifflin stories ("Officer Buckle and Gloria," "ANTS," and "The Great Ball Game"). Your 2nd grade ELD learners will enjoy the lively animals in the stories as they practice their prepositions and conjunctions, as well as drawing conclusions and cause and effect, in several sentence frames. This lesson is differentiated into Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced levels.

Animal friends and families help your 1st graders with their ELD and literacy skills in three Houghton-Mifflin stories ("The Secret Code," Bud's Day Out," and "An Egg Is An Egg, or, Who's in a Family?"). They can practice drawing conclusions, comparing and contrasting, and sequencing events in the stories. Additionally, vocabulary lists and sentence frames with grammar prompts are differentiated into three different skill levels.

Using three Houghton-Mifflin stories ("My Name is Maria Isabel," "Marven of the Great North Woods," "The Last Dragon," and "Sing to the Stars"), fourth-grade ELD pupils practice literacy and grammar skills. Differentiated vocabulary lists and sentence frames help them to address the necessary standards at their appropriate skill level.

From fishing to forest fires, this lesson plan includes all kinds of scenarios for you to discuss with your ELD students. Three stories from Houghton-Mifflin ("Salmon Summer," "Wildfires," and "Skylark") help beginning, intermediate, and advanced pupils to practice their vocabulary and writing. Additionally, they practice making inferences and using adverbs and prepositions in simple and complex sentences.

Three coming-of-age Houghton-Mifflin stories (an excerpt from Where the Red Fern Grows, as well as "Last Summer with Maizon," and "The Challenge") show your ELD pupils the trials and tribulations of growing up. Differentiated sentence frames incorporate vocabulary and conventions, as well as practicing literary skills from ELD standards.

Access your beginning, intermediate, and advanced learners' needs with this thorough lesson plan. The Houghton-Mifflin stories ("Pepita Talks Twice," "Poppa's New Pants," and "Ramona Quimby, Age 8") address vocabulary, grammatical forms, and and increasingly independent writing activities. Additionally, individuals can work on their listening and speaking ELD standards as well as their reading and writing ELD standards.

Eureka! Discover gold in this ELD history lesson plan, which provides both instruction and a number of activities. Teachers first engage the class in a "call and response" activity about people who came to California during the Gold Rush, and then guide them through application activities (creating cartoons and advertisements). Though the plan indicates an hour for completion, it could comfortably be split up over a few days.

See, hear, touch, taste, and smell this instructional activity, which takes ELD pupils through the functions of the five senses. The instructional activity includes direct instruction that leads into a guided practice "sight and signal game," where they rehearse and reinforce how each sense works. The song "What Can I See?" and the book Puff, Flash, Bang are mentioned but not included, and can be replaced with any other song or book that has lots of sensory images.

Weathering both family dynamics and sudden storms are the main topics of these three stories from Houghton-Mifflin ("Brothers and Sisters," "Jalapeno Bagels," "Carousel," and "Thunder Cake"). Practice generalizing and sequencing events as you read about siblings, baking, and thunder. The lesson is differentiated for Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced learners, and includes vocabulary and sentence frames for each skill level.