Considering creating a Profession Learning Community at your school? Here's a seven-page glossary of key terms and concepts, everything from action orientation and adaptive to values and vision, that all members should know to...

Neil Gaiman's award winning children's fantasy novel, The Graveyard Book, is the focus of a literary analysis overview. Those new to the novel can decide whether the book is appropriate for whole-class discussion or as a book circle...

Listening is a skill, and with the help of the communication activities in this packet, class members improve their active listening skills. 

Dig into chapter 19 of Running Out of Time with questions covering each level of Bloom's Taxonomy. Learners read the text, respond to the questions in paragraph form, and then discuss the answers as a class.

Determine if the reading level of Running Out of Time is too easy, to difficult, or just right for your pupils with a cloze reading exercise. After listening to the teacher read the passage, learners fill in the blanks on the cloze...

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton is always a favorite for middle and high school readers because it addresses issues that hit home to them, decades after the book is set. Have learners fill out an anticipation guide that encourages them to...

Encourage close reading of the text and a focus on how Sandra Cisneros' develops her characters with an activity that asks teams to sort, group, and label character descriptions from The House on Mango Street.

Kids love to be the experts! With four themes from The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, small groups work together to answer specific questions addressing each theme. They then stand in front of the class and field...

Discuss the environment of the Arctic tundra using this resource. The focus of this lesson is the story A Walk in the Tundra by Rebecca L. Johnson. The appealing illustrations are bound to captivate your class! After reading the...

Examine multiple ways to solve algebraic equations. Pupils will generate a problem solving strategy that addresses the prompt given by the teacher. They will then share their problem solving strategy with the class. Graphic organizers,...

Students demonstrate how to solve multiplication word problems. In this problem solving lesson, students read examples of multiplication word problems and are taught how to use repeated addition to solve the problems. This strategy is...

Sixth graders practice six steps to effective problem solving. Working with the school counselor, class members are presented with a scenario that requires them to make a decision. Individuals then write a reflection in which they...

Encourage good reading habits with an activity that asks class members to examine the title and cover of Out of the Dust, and then make predictions about the setting of and events in the tale.  

Question what you read with a lesson based on Bloom's Taxonomy. As kids read The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, they formulate questions with cues from a graphic organizer, and answer them to work on critical...

Chapter 12 of The Hobbit provides the text for an exercise that asks readers to use the QAR strategy to develop and respond to questions about story.

The anticipation guide for Words by Heart is the first of a series of six, contains lesson plans for the activity as well as a handout to be completed individually, in pairs, or as a class. It sparks interest for the text...

Good readers use what they know and clues found in a story to make inferences about what a writer wants readers to consider. Here's a graphic that supports this comprehension strategy and asks kids to record what they know, the clues...

A reading guide designed for Jennifer Fleischner's nonfiction text, The Apaches: People of the Southwest, provides readers with three levels of comprehension questions meant to encourage higher-level thinking.

Discover the family histories that make the classroom with a family tree activity. Scholars locate information about their family, construct a family tree, and work together to tally where family members are born.  

Making inferences is a skill that goes beyond the comprehension of written text. In this simple exercise, young learners are provided with a photograph and asked to answer a series of inference questions using only on the...

Here's a great way to make vocabulary words drawn from Edward Bloor's novel Tangerine memorable. Kids create a word square, and in one quadrant write the word. A picture goes in a second quadrant, the definition in a third, and a...

Is love the strongest force in the world? Delve into the themes of The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas with an anticipation guide that introduces the main points of discussion. Kids mark their agreement or disagreement with...

Learn about the characters of Natalie Babbitt's Tuck Everlasting with a character biopoem. Readers fill in a poem format to detail the character traits of Winnie, Jesse, Miles, and Mae, and share their finished poems...

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