Turn the pupil into the teacher to help your learners pick up and retain vocabulary from Ordinary People by Judith Guest. Each individual selects a word, studies it in depth, and then teaches their word to the rest of the class, one...

Readers of Mississippi Trial, 1955 engage in a desktop teaching activity and teach other class members the meaning of a word from Christopher Crowe's novel using an embellished illustration of their word.

Inspire first grade artists to learn about abstract and realistic art while reading Eric Carle's Where are you Going? To See My Friend. Young artists design and make a mural collage by tearing shapes of paper while comparing English and...

A staggering amount of work went into compiling this vocabulary resource for Carson McCullers' The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. The overview provides a rationale for the strategy and information about tier 1, 2, and 3 words. The...

Invite your pupils to do the teaching when it comes to the vocabulary in Pudd'nhead Wilson. Each individual is assigned one word to research in depth and teach to classmates, one pupil at a time.

Here's a resource that deserves a place in your curriculum library, whether or not your school has adopted the Common Core. Designed for middle and high school language arts classes, the packet is packed with teaching tips, materials,...

Suggestions for using Roberto Marzano's six-step approach to academic vocabulary instruction are detailed in a packet that includes graphic organizers, worksheets, and activities.

Sail with Christopher Columbus on a biographical reading adventure. Young explorers learn about the life of Sir Columbus as they hone their comprehension skills through guiding questions, shared reading, and fluency practice. Included in...

Reinforce important reading skills with a set of vocabulary lesson plans. Middle schoolers complete sentences, play word games, finish analogies, and build their growing vocabulary with a packet of helpful and applicable graphic organizers.

Help your pupils discover the power of context clues by teaching the this vocabulary strategy. Designed to go with words from Willa Cather's My Antonia, this exercise focuses on having individuals use their own words to define new...

Take an in-depth look into the vocabulary from the novel, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan. With a list of words to choose from, scholars discover the definition, origin, stories associated with...

Change places with your pupils, and let them teach their peers! Each learner signs up to teach a word from a list provided by the teacher (included here). Then, they complete a graphic organizer to help them develop a better...

Here is a mid-unit assessment for a group of lessons studying the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The first half of this instructional activity calls for several forms of review. Your class will review the content of the...

Your class continues to explore the history of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In addition to learning about the background of this text, learners work on the skill of identifying and understanding key academic vocabulary....

What fun! As part of a vocabulary exercise designed for Victor Martinez's Parrot in the Oven: Mi Vida readers create word trees with the trunk representing the root word and the branches representing prefixes that can be added to the...

There was an old lady who swallowed some leaves? Little learners read a new version of the old swallow story with a fall twist as they try to answer the big question; Why is that lady swallowing all that weird stuff? The teacher's guide...

The engaging story Rain School is further explored in the third lesson of a larger unit that explicitly teaches close reading skills by answering questions whose answers can only be found inside the text. Through teacher...

One of my favorite things about this resource is that they use a standardized lexile to help you determine who should be reading what book. I also love this great teacher's guide for the book, The Class Election from the Black...

While music lyrics are often used to teach literary elements, the richness of this resource comes from the wealth of exercises, activities, and support materials provided in the packet.  Although designed for gifted learners, the...

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...

Little ones sing Christmas carols, complete craft projects, and play word games while learning new vocabulary in part one of two-part ESL lesson plan series.

Writers align their position papers with the last two rows in the rubric. After looking at the rubric rows for vocabulary and conventions along with feedback on their papers, class members revise their essays. They then look at the...

Don't let your class get tripped up on the tricky words in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood! Instead, assign each member of the class one or two words and each can be an expert. Explicit directions are included, as well as a list of...

Expand the vocabulary of young readers with this series of five activities based the children's book Joseph Had a Little Overcoat by Simms Taback. From playing bingo to group storytelling, a variety of different approaches are...