This pre-reading activity will certainly make your class ponder. With five questions to reflect upon, get insight to the moral dilemma Percy faced in the novel Percy Jackson and the Olympians, The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan. 

Your class won't be a bunch of squares from using this well-rounded activity! Instead, they'll be expressing thoughtful questions using the cubing strategy. The class brainstorms questions of increasing rigor about Zach's Lie in the...

Eric Liu's formula "power plus character equals citizenship" and his three strategies to making change happen model for high schoolers how to develop citizen power, how to get involved and participate to make democracy work. Class...

Teenagers could use a little help with their decision-making process. Guide them through the steps of mature choices, outside influences, and expected consequences with a lesson about making decisions.

Designed as a postreading activity for Act II of Cyrano de Bergerac, this resource uses the QAR strategy to get readers thinking deeper about the texts they're reading. Explicit directions for the teacher are included, so don't fret if...

Readers of Neal Shusterman's young adult science fiction novel, Unwind, record what they know, what they want to know, how the will find answers to the questions, on a KWHL chart.

In the novel, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan, Percy is faced with a major decision. After reading, chapter 19, discuss the decision-making process Percy took, what he decided to...

Make note of what readers know, what to know, and have learned during a unit on Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea. As class members read the book, they jot down their ideas on a KWHL chart, and consider what they have...

Good readers make connections between texts. The SAT regularly assesses the ability to make those connections using paired reading passages, a topic discussed in an official SAT practice lesson plan on synthesis. During the instructional...

Let's make connections! Using the resource, class members make connections between the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and their readers theater scripts. To finish, they complete a worksheet to evaluate the role of narration in...

With What Do You See at the Pond?, young readers explore pond life and practice reading strategies. Learners first make predictions and then read the simple story independently. After a second read-through with a partner, kids come...

Asking questions about a text is an effective way to improve reading comprehension. Apply the Question Answer Response strategy to your unit on William Shakespeare's The Tempest. As kids read each passage, they decide if the answer...

Encourage your readers to make connections between texts with this resource. After compiling notes for each text read (you choose the texts), groups craft skits in which major characters from each text meet. There is a rubric for the...

In preparation for the unit exam, groups employ the strategies they have been practicing to formulate an interpretative claim about the connections between Christopher Paul Curtis's " Bud, Not Buddy, and Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford...

Develop and strengthen reading comprehension strategies through this comprehensive teaching guide. Your learners will practice making text connections, inferences, predictions, and more using reading passages from the teen-appropriate...

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...

Explore emotions associated with moving to a new home with young learners. First they listen to the books Painted Words/Spoken Memories by Aliki and Going Home by Eve Bunting. Then they are invited to share their experiences as well as...

"What are Henry's options?" "What do you think Henry will do?" To better understand the central conflict for the main character in Robert Cormier's Tunes for Bears to Dance to, class members engage in a compare-and-contrast activity that...

Spruce up a class reading of the children's book Joseph Had a Little Overcoat by Simms Taback with this fun series of activities. Starting with a list of reading comprehension questions and key vocabulary to address during a teacher...

A scarlet letter “V” stands for a desktop teaching vocabulary activity designed for Speak. Prior to reading Laurie Hales Anderson’s young adult novel, individuals sign up for a word, design a handout that illustrates the word, includes...

As a before reading strategy, class members select a tale from mythology, examine several picture book versions of the myth, and fill out part of a Venn diagram with observations about the hero in particular and the myth in...

Here is a great learning task that focuses on the development of areas in computational fluency including strategies in mental math. Young learners are guided through a list of addition expressions that help them visually understand the...

Build upon linear functions to learn about quadratics. The lesson plan introduces the concept of zeros for quadratic functions and makes the connection to the linear factors of the function. It presents quadratics in both graphical and...

Heart of Darkness can challenge even the best readers. Here's a pre-reading strategy that will engage class members and provide background and context for Conrad's study of racism, savagery and imperialism. Class members brainstorm,...