Informative writing is emphasized in the standards. Help your learners reach that goal with the plan for paragraph writing outlined here. After reviewing the work from the day before and adding to their vocabulary notebooks, class...

Fourth graders view examples of help-wanted ads as they plan and create their own writing in the fourteenth instructional activity of this unit on colonial trade. The engagement of the class is captured when the teacher shares an actual...

The opening chapters of Mark Twain's masterpiece, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, can be daunting for some readers. A reader's theater assignment divides the second chapter of the novel into a seven-role script, allowing...

Before beginning The Things They Carried, class members are asked to use a KWHL chart to record what they know about war, what they want to know, and where they might find answers to their questions. Groups then research...

Theodore Roosevelt and the Marquis de Mores were both born in 1858, and both came to the Dakota territory in 1883, but they influenced the developing country of America in different ways. Elementary and middle schoolers apply written and...

It's a jungle out there! Teachers gain information to guide learners through reading The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. Instructors give an overview of the characters in the story and a summary of each chapter. The resource includes questions...

Introduce learners to allegorical art with four bronze sculptures by Francesco Bertos. After modeling how to recognize bias and allegory in Bertos' Africa, class groups examine the other three sculptures in the series before creating...

The poems of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson are the focus of a unit that asks readers to consider how an artist's life and changes in society influences his or her work. After careful study of Whitman's and Dickinson's perspectives on...

To conclude their study of immigration and human rights, class members create a civic engagement project centered on an issue of immigration and designed to influence US immigration policy. They examine examples of attempts to...

What an incredible collection of ideas for teaching about the 2014 World Cup in Brazil! This resource is packed with news articles and instructional activities on a wide variety of topics, from the global popularity of soccer and the...