She was born with her eyes closed and a word on her tongue, a word she could not taste. Her name was Anidori-Kiladra Talianna Isilee, Crown Princess of Kildenree, and she spent the first years of her life listening to her aunt's stories...

The Directed Reading Thinking Activity (DRTA) is a strategy that guides students in asking questions about a text, making predictions, and then reading to confirm or refute their predictions. The DRTA process encourages students to be...

In its practice guide Improving Adolescent Literacy: Effective Classroom and Intervention Practices, the Dept. of Education offers five recommendations for increasing the reading ability of adolescents. Those recommendations are...

CommonLit.org is a wonderful resource to use in a Language Arts classroom. Each story or article is accompanied by guided reading questions, assessment questions, and discussion questions. In addition, students can click on words to see...

CommonLit.org is a wonderful resource to use in a Language Arts classroom. Each story, poem, or article is accompanied by guided reading questions, assessment questions, and discussion questions. In addition, students can click on words...

Movie days in the classroom are infrequent and far between, but what if teachers used television as a means of teaching? Shelby Ostergaard discusses whether or not television can be considered a form of literature and the benefits and...

Barack Obama served as the 44th President of the United States from 2009 to 2017. In 2009, Obama was also awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work strengthening international relations. In his acceptance speech, Obama discusses the...

For most people, the threat of jail is enough to convince them to abide by society's laws. But for Gangaram Mahes, the promise of jail time is what prompts his criminal activity. In this New York Times article, Rick Bragg discusses why...

[Free Registration/Login Required] Abridged from the full text located at the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, this passage provides information about the development of the transcontinental railroad. Paired texts, a text...

The Myanmar (also known as Berma) military has been accused of human rights violations with their increasingly violent persecution of Rohingya Muslims, an ethnic and religious minority in the nation. The violence in Myanmar has displaced...

Think Alouds help students learn to monitor their thinking as they read an assigned passage. Students are directed by a series of questions which they think about and answer aloud while reading. This process reveals how much they...

Reading questions for each chapter of Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston.

A detailed mini-guide to award-winning author Katherine Paterson's novel "Lyddie." Provides comprehensive information about the novel, including historical/biographical context, chapter summaries, study questions, and post-reading...

Organizing information questions ask you to understand and analyze how a passage works to make an argument. What is the progression of ideas in the passage? or What is the purpose of a specific paragraph?

In a given text, words and phrases do not appear in isolation but are embedded in the context of a narrative, an argument, an explanation, and so on. Accordingly, clarifying meaning questions test your ability to identify contextually...

Purpose of reference questions ask you to identify why the author referred to something in a certain part of the text. In other words, what was the point of including the reference?

Some questions ask you to identify which scenario matches the principle in a passage. This type of question asks you to apply a principle or idea presented in the passage to a new context presented in the choices.

There are two kinds of additional evidence questions on the LSAT: strengthening evidence and weakening evidence. This article describes strategies for answering these types of questions along with examples.

Article discusses the author's attitude or the attitudes of people or groups that are mentioned. While not explicitly stated, these attitudes can be discovered from both the language and content of the passage.

Comprehensive background overview that helps you learn about the developing country of India. Read up on key issues such as poverty, human rights, politics, health, climate, and development that are of concern. Includes numerous useful...

Extensive site for teaching Spanish speaking ELL. The theme of this unit is the directions - An "e-mail" is presented, giving directions to a house party - Interactive exercise follows, asking comprehension questions - A guided writing...

A detailed and comprehensive site that gives information on how to effectively and professionally write for the world wide web.

Great site from the BBC with ideas and effective methods for teaching ESL class -- pronunciation, listening, reading, and other ESL topics. Downloads include 50+ PDF tools, handouts, quizzes and other helpful material.

This lesson focuses on helping your audience listen better by offering strategies such as read feedback cues, employ strategies for maintaining audience focus, use strategies to maximize audience understanding, build credibility, and...