Finished your novel? What’s next? Designing the book cover, of course. But how to begin? After examining the covers of published books and noting the common elements of these jackets, young novelists design a front and back cover for...

In our increasingly visual society, it is often difficult for some readers to create a mental picture of a picture created only with words. An image-rich text like F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby can therefore, present a real...

An excellent lesson plan on the classic book, Where the Red Fern Grows. Learners view the W. Wilson Rawls website and engage in a series of activities generated by the website. They write in their reflective journals, watch a video, and...

Tap into the wisdom and knowledge of older members of the community with this New York Times plan. To warm up, learners write about and discuss advice they have been given. After reading "The Life Report," an op-ed column that asks older...

Take the next step in the writing process with a lesson plan geared towards the completion of writing an evidence-based essay about a rule to live by, as Bud did in Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis. Pupils collaborate with their...

Students determine the workings of the Braille alphabet and how people with visual impairments learn how to use it. In this Braille instructional activity, students study the associated vocabulary, read about Helen Keller, and complete...

Mr. Snowman wants to help emerging readers understand compound words, so he segments some familiar words to help them see that they are made of two distinct words. Learners repeat the words, both segmented and blended, and observe them...

When is a staple remover a fanged monster? In your ELA classroom when you're teaching this fun figurative language lesson, of course! Get your young writers using figurative language by making a game of it. Give groups a paper bag full...

Students discover enunciation and alliteration by reading tongue twisters in class.  For this language arts lesson, students listen and repeat some of the classic childhood tongue twisters along with their teacher.  Students...

Explore caves with your class! Your scholars will participate in scientific observation, research, inference and deduction, reading, vocabulary, and writing activities about caves with this lesson plan. This resource contains five...

What a great activity. Kids create humorous ceramic character (heads) spikes to enliven a planter. Modern art is full of expressive and exaggerated forms and your class gets to create them out of clay. This would be a lovely activity to...

Use this writing and photography lesson plan in your descriptive writing unit. Elementary and middle schoolers write and create a story line incorporating photos from Inspiration or their own personal photos. They experiment with...

Here is a complex lesson plan that interweaves the history of the Jim Crow South and the Great Migration with the study of poetry, art, and blues music from the Harlem Renaissance. The plan helps young historians develop a deep...

Stress the importance of authenticating online resources and understanding the sources of websites' information with this activity. Using a Web-based activity, the lesson plan prompts young learners to think critically about determining...

Kids love to pretend. Use this imaginative energy to develop their understanding of characterization. Class members dress up as a character from their novel-writing project and sit for a filmed interview. In responding to questions about...

Develop critical thinkers and awareness of the media's techniques. Impressionable minds analyze advertisements they see all around them in this potentially 3-week long unit of five complete lesson plans. Extended discussions, outside...

Each color holds its own feeling and these feelings are used to describe the four seasons. Youngsters create a color palate based on the four seasons, assigning various colors to each season. They each create four clay tiles, painting...

For this ninth lesson plan in a larger beginning-of-the-year unit, close reading skills are used independently to find the gist of the story That Book Woman. Rereading for important details is the targeted skill to unlock a deeper...

Should a criminal's punishment match the crime? An argumentative writing plan explores this question as class members investigate a variety of mixed-medium sources by experts in the field, form evidence-based claims, and support them...

Explicitly explained and delightfully detailed are two ways to describe this tenth lesson plan in a larger unit designed for the first few weeks of third grade. Learners continue to use and develop previously learned close reading...

Writing a paragraph from details found directly in a text is the central focus of this thorough and explicit lesson plan. Using the stories Nasreen's Secret School and Rain School, third graders are lead step-by-step...

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...

Students investigate different painting techniques by studying classic works of art.  In this art history instructional activity, students observe the famous Madonna and Child with Saints painting and describe the texture and images...

Explore concepts of audience, purpose and symbols in this lesson from Media Smarts that asks students to consider all the functions of music. Through a series of discussions and activities, your class will brainstorm possible functions...