How do you grow a goal from a dream to reality? You make a plan! After reading chapters two and three of Where the Red Fern Grows, learners map how Billy earns his dogs by completing an organizer in pairs and then discussing answers in...

What was life like in colonial America? Follow this lesson and your pupils will find out what people in colonial times did for work and for fun. Ask learners to compare and contrast the two texts and explain what the reading helped them...

Vary, bury, pull, fit. These tips for improving transitions in writing are found on a template designed as a teacher resource. A clever way to make memorable these suggestions for improving transitions in writing, the language in the...

What is the author's purpose in writing a joke book? What about a book about the digestive system? Explore author's purpose with a worksheet that challenges kids to identify whether ten books are meant to entertain, inform, or persuade.

Challenge your third and fourth graders to look deeply into a text with a reading comprehension activity. After learners finish the short passage, they answer four questions that range in levels of difficulty and analysis.

How do you talk about things that have already happened? What about things that happened in the past and are still happening? Explore past, past perfect, and past progressive verb tenses in a helpful slideshow presentation.

How are the stars similar to the sun in our galaxy? Learn all about the solar system with a reading excerpt about the sun and the stars. Kids read an informational passage before they answer questions about reading comprehension,...

Take a trip to Mardi Gras with a festive reading packet! After class members read an informational article about the history and celebration of Mardi Gras, they think about the structure of the passage...

Read about the ways that different cultures set up homes with a set of reading activities. Learners read short paragraphs that cover one or more different ideas, and answer four questions about what they have read, including whether or...

Reinforce language and reading comprehension skills with a worksheet focused on context clues. Scholars carefully read twelve sentences, use prior knowledge and sentence clues to define an unknown word.   

Which comes first in an adjective phrase: a word denoting a noun's quality, or a word describing a noun's function? If your elementary grammarians don't know the answer, have them review ten pairs of adjective phrases and circle the one...

Use websites to read stories about heroes. The "My Hero" website provides skills and reading materials to help your class analyze sequence and story parts. They put the events in order to show the correct sequence of events.

After the events on 9/11 many Muslim-Americans experienced discrimination because of their ethnicity and faith. Help break the cycle of ignorance by educating your students on the history, religion, and beliefs of a different culture....

Learners view image of Bridgeport Community Protest, discuss event depicted in image, and demonstrate knowledge of protest by organizing and carrying out an actual protest or demonstration.

Students examine the art of storytelling. In groups, they write their own African folktales, design costumes, props and scenery, and videotape folktale presented in dramatic form.

Students, after reading a novel, utilize geographic skills to map out the places described in the novel. They collect data, envision spatial features and then design a map to work off of to complete their assignment. Each student also...

This unit introduces book clubs/literature circles to lower elementary classes, but could be adapted to higher grades. It outlines the anticipatory activity that includes a WebQuest, a discussion to clarify questions about the unit,...

Here is a one-stop planning resource for Louis Sachar's Newbery Award-winning book Holes. You'll find 21 links to worksheets and various activities designed to span the entire book. Learners draw to help analyze settings and...

Learners develop computer research skills while searching facts about Harriet Tubman. Students learn about ways in which Harriet Tubman's childhood influenced her future. Learners learn to use primary documents to learn about the...

Through reading and writing, learners explore common elements found in fairy tales. After discussing traditional fairy tales, class members listen to The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs by John Scieszka, a hilarious retelling of the...

Create a commercial for a favorite book and broadcast this pitch on the Sly Book Channel! Learners practice retelling, summarizing, comparing/contrasting, and evaluation skills as they prepare their scripts. The approved scripts are then...

Regale your class with renditions of Aesop's fables from the engaging, and beautifully illustrated book by Jerry Pinkney. Guide discussion to practice prediction, compare and contrast various stories, explore the connections between the...

How does recognizing the author's purpose help you draw conclusions about a topic? Using two articles (both are attached), learners brainstorm why each author wrote each article. Are their purposes similar or different? Learners use a...

This PowerPoint provides a summary, comprehension questions, vocabulary words, and links for independent activities related to the story "The Swimming Hole" by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Age-appropriate definitions of such literacy elements...