What does a philanthropist do? Help your class explore philanthropy using character development and literacy ideas. Learners will define and give examples of philanthropy, listen to The Lion and the Mouse, discuss how the characters help...

Explore the structure of narrative writing with this fun, collaborative activity. Start by reading aloud a short story, asking small groups of learners to fill in key events on a large story board prepared on the class whiteboard....

Learn about the animals of Australia with a language arts lesson about an Australian folktale called, Why Koala Has a Stumpy Tail. After reading the story as a class, kids discuss events and characters from the book, retell the...

An anthology created for kindergarteners explores classic stories that have been told for generations. Young scholars listen to 10 read-alouds, answer reading comprehension questions, and practice a skill related to the text. Stories...

What steps did Henry "Box" Brown take while planning his own escape from slavery? Learners work in groups to analyze segments of Brown's narrative and identify the sequence of the most important events of his story.

Enhance a reading of the Caldecott Medal-winning children's book Joseph had a Little Overcoat by Simms Taback with this collection of learning activities. Starting with general background information about the book and author,...

Want to boost your readers' comprehension skills and strategies? Look to these five pages, each with a short story and questions to answer covering main idea, facts, sequence of events, context clues, conclusions, and making...

Encourage scholars to retell their favorite short story or folktale, adding personal details to make it their own. After reading their book of choice several times, story tellers retell a tale verbally to their classmates. 

Fourth graders respond to a text using textual evidence to support their answers to questions. Students observe the teacher model a quick warm up on the chronological sequence of events from the passage, Leaving Home. In this literacy...

For those class members who have mastered the basic concepts and need extra challenges, here's a packet of activities sure to engage them in stories about American immigration and exploration. Kids may design a dramatic...

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...

"You are pigs." With those three simple words, the lives of the Piggott family were changed forever. Read aloud the children's story Piggybook by Anthony Browne and teach your class the importance of personal responsibility,...

Narrative essay writing is the focus of a series of exercises that model for learners how to not only read a narrative, but how to also examine the techniques fiction writers use to create a setting, develop their characters, represent...

Teach kids how to watch television, specifically the news, with this creative idea for learners of all ages from the Media Awareness Network. The elementary school plan focuses on presenting news as a story and uses Jon Scieszka's story...

Fifth graders complete activities to help them sequence events in a story. In this sequencing lesson, 5th graders read a story and work in groups to retell the story by creating a flowchart of events to reconstruct. Students create their...

What a fantastic project idea for discussing not only the history of America's expansion into the West, but for reviewing any major unit of history in your class. Pupils build stamp collections to visually represent themes of the...

A reading of Peggy Parish's Amelia Bedelia launches a study of idioms. Groups then select several idioms, write the meaning of the expressions, draw or select images, and use GIMP or Photoshop to create an idiom book. 

After a grand conversation about immigration to the United States, scholars interview a family member to learn about their journey to America. They then take their new-found knowledge and apply their findings to tracking their family...

As part of a study of the history of the Chumash on California's Channel Island chain, class members view the documentary Once Upon a Time, respond to discussion questions, and create a timeline for the different waves of migration.

For many people, Barack Obama's presidency was the next step in Martin Luther King, Jr's dream of America's future. Explore the dreams of Americans past and present, as well as the young Americans in your class, with a set of activities...

Students analyze an African folktale. In this literature lesson, students read the story "Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters" by John Steptoe and analyze the acts of kindness in the story. Students identify the setting of the story and find...

Enhance narrative writing instruction with engaging and interactive planning pages. Eight lessons take authors through the process of writing a narrative story, two lessons prompt writers to create a personal narrative, and a...

Designed for third graders but appropriate for older learners as well, this packet of materials underscores the necessity of teaching kids how to summarize, how to identify main ideas and supporting details, and how to ask questions...

Learners develop verbal and visual representations of events from the story of the U.S. folklore character Paul Bunyan. Students work together to put these events in sequential order on an informal timeline. Learners then write in their...