The activity focuses on reading chunked text. Peers grouped by specific ability levels take turns reading a text with proper intonation, expression, and phrasing.

Gradually build understanding of author's point of view through a scaffolded set of exercises. Moving from direct instruction, to collaborative work, and eventually to independent practice, these steps will assist your class in...

The second lesson of a pair about Paul Laurence Dunbar, this plan focuses in particular on his poem, "We Wear the Masks." After a short historical introduction, class members conduct a series or readings, marking up the text and...

By using explicit textual evidence, individuals can strongly support their ideas and opinions. The presentation suggests in order to use explicit textual evidence, one must state their idea, cite evidence in the text that led...

Great literature discussions are a consequence of carefully crafted questions, interpretative questions that permit more than one response, and responses supported by specific evidence from the text. The discussion questions in a guide...

Bingo! Practice vocabulary from William Shakespeare's The Tempest with a fun matching game. As you call out the definitions, class members mark the new vocabulary words that match and try to get five in a row.

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...

The toss of a die determines what questions your pupils will answer in this lesson. Learners respond to questions based on Bloom's taxonomy, discussing The Adventures of Tom Sawyer with classmates along the way. They finish by writing up...

Honor Abe Lincoln with a set of activity-based worksheets that can be used independently and in collaborative groups. Young historians participate in a listening activity where they fill in the missing blanks in a passage while being...

Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles provides the text for a fishbowl activity. Class members to sit in concentric circles, with the center circle discussing the topics from the book, and the outer circle observing the...

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. 

This resource makes accessible the text that portrays the occurrences leading to C.S. Lewis’s finding of God. It encourages the reader to personally reflect upon, and examine Surprised by Joy. The document is divided into two sets where...

Caring, trustworthiness, and responsibility—these are only a few character traits in focus of a lesson based on stories from the Civil War era. Class members explore several influential lives while reading biographies that highlight...

A great actor has the ability to make or break a play. A series of lesson plans related to William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar looks closely at the choices actors make during a production of the play to help provide insight into the...

Help your learners work with difficult or archaic words. A continuation of lesson two of this module, the plan here focuses on deciphering the Inventory of John Allen, in particular the unfamiliar words that make up much of the list. Add...

Home sweet home. Humans, birds, beavers, ants, we all need a place place to rest and keep us safe. In the ninth instructional activity of this series, the importance of shelter is discussed as the teacher reads aloud the book Tillena...

Engage further in Esperanza Rising with a focus on close reading and metaphor. Class members zero in on the tenth chapter, examining characters and big ideas. Pupils discuss the text in small groups and as a whole class, and...

Set up your class to read Esperanza Rising, by Pam Muñoz Ryan, through a class read-aloud and exploration of the setting. The detailed instructional activity outlines each step. First, class members read over the first few pages and...

Post-It notes, highlighting, underlining. Sam Anderson’s New York Times Magazine article, “What I Really Want Is Someone Rolling Around in the Text,” launches a study of “marginalia,” or writing thoughts in the margins of a text. After...

Discuss how diseases have impacted human history. Divide your class into groups and assign each group one of the following: tuberculosis, malaria, plague, cholera, smallpox, and AIDS. They read up on, complete a concept map, and present...

Take the concept of burning calories to a more literal level in the second of seven lessons about energy in the realm of food and fitness. Using simple materials, groups will burn breakfast cereal and a pecan to see which one gives off...

The 1960's marked shifts in American culture, politics, and policy. Your class groups up to research a series of primary source documents resulting in a timeline and a 15 minute oral presentation. Active learning all the way.

As Shakespeare famously wrote, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet," but can the same be said for a state? For this elementary geography lesson, students are assigned specific states to research using the information...

Set up your class to read Esperanza Rising, by Pam Munoz Ryan, through a class read-aloud and exploration of the setting. The detailed lesson plan outlines each step. First, class members read over the first few pages and focus on the...