Poetry is a very personal and introspective art form. Give your class the opportunity to understand how a poet's voice can speak to them on a personal level, and that every reader can respond to an author differently. After a poetic...

Scholars submit their final performance task, a letter to a publisher about an athlete's legacy. As a culminating activity, they share their work with classmates in small groups. 

Engage conversation and explore the journey as you challenge young readers to interpret the german folktale, "The Fisherman and His Wife" written by literary brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm.

Harriet Beecher Stowe's plea for abolition is not only laid plain in her acclaimed novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, but in her written correspondence as well. High schoolers read a letter written by Stowe to Prince Albert and Queen Victoria to...

The importance of considering multiple perspectives of the same event is the big idea in this exercise that focuses on the Boston Massacre. Class groups examine photos of four depictions of the massacre, an English and an American...

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" serves as an exemplar for a mini-lesson on semicolons. Working alone or in small groups, class members first circle all the semicolons in the letter, and then consider how this...

Accompany instruction and the celebration of El Dia de los Muertos with a loaf of Pan de los Muertos. Here, scholars measure ingredients precisely to create tasty bread, write a remembrance for someone who has...

Hunkering down in the trenches of World War I, Leland Linman decided to write a journal about his experiences. By reading Linman's entries in the fourth installment of an eight-part lesson series, scholars get a firsthand look at life in...

Personal correspondence in the form of letters is not as common as it once was. This resource presents an opportunity for you to introduce your class to letter writing and cover topics in social studies. Learners read a letter written in...

Create a picture dictionary for one of William Shakespeare's most famous plays. After readers finish The Tempest, they assign each letter of the alphabet to a concept or character, and add a description and evidence from...

What is the role of a newspaper's Op-Ed page? High schoolers explore the New York Times' "Op-Ed at 40," an interactive feature that lets them browse through 40 years worth of op-ed features, and consider the purpose and value of this...

Examine author's purpose in a persuasive text using this scaffolded plan. You essentially have a verbatim script here, but it can definitely be used as an outline instead. Review questions that readers should ask themselves when...

Biology or health classmates read a case study about a family who is dealing with fetal alcohol syndrome. The PowerPoint that is supposed to be shown is not included, but there are a plethora of web resources that can be used to help you...

Should primary graders have their own computers? Should animals be kept in captivity? Young writers learn how to develop and support a claim in this short unit on persuasive writing.

Imagine a project that informs and entertains. Replace book reports with a bulletin board that highlights all the important elements of a novel. Readers research the author, create a timeline of events in the story, write a...

The Scarlet Letter may be a classic, but keeping high schoolers engaged in the reading of Hawthorne's vocabulary, syntax, imagery, and historical references presents it own set of challenges. Here's a guide that offers readers...

The Magic Pot by Patricia Coombs is the theme of this multidisciplinary lesson plan. Early readers first take part in a read aloud and grand conversation about the story's details. Then, they get to work practicing their skills in...

Get your kids thinking about climate change with a series of activities that include creating a ditty box poem for the planet, a poem that identifies concepts or objects they would want to preserve.

To gain an understanding of how the Great Depression affected everyday citizens, class members examine letters written either to the president or to the governor of Alabama asking for assistance.

Readers take all the information they gained from the last 19 lessons and complete an essay describing how King develops his purpose and claim in "Letter from Birmingham Jail." Pupils use a rubric and checklist to help guide their...

In his 2013 introduction to Fahrenheit 451, Neil Gaiman states, “Fiction is a lie that tells us true things, over and over.” In this extraordinary unit plan, readers "explore the power of written language to educate and...

What is the sharecropping system? What role did it play in the post-Civil War economy of the South? Who were the sharecroppers? Who employed them? How were they paid? To answer these questions, kids examine a series of sharecropper...

As your class finishes the novel Dragonwings, use these culminating projects. A vocabulary list is given for chapters eleven and twelve and either an epitaph or letter activity concludes the book. The final project consists of creating a...

Visit the Magic Treehouse and take your class on a trip through time with a reading of the children's book Mummies in the Morning. Using the story to spark an investigation into Egyptian culture, this literature unit engages...