Trading in Colonial America is the focus of a lesson plan that boosts reading skills. As a class, scholars examine the informational text for crucial details, use their newfound knowledge to share information with their peers, and write...

Give your guided reading lesson plan a boost with a sample lesson plan designed to reinforce academic content covered in previous assessments. The sample plan describes how the story and activities were chosen and offers the...

Take your guided reading lesson plans to the next level with a collection of printables, templates, and reference tools equipped to support the reading needs of your readers. Included is a detailed information page, grouping sheet,...

“If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster/And treat those two impostors just the same. . .” After concluding Fever 1793 class members engage in a reading strategy that asks them to connect their thoughts about the self-reliance theme in...

Over the course of five periods, scholars create a poetry portfolio. They begin with a reading of the poem, Firefly. With a focus on vocabulary, learners reread the poem then look for sight words and other skills. 

Young journalists use a "Is This Story Share-Worthy?" flowchart graphic to decide whether a story is worth sharing online. Instructors provide groups with fake news, poor quality stories, opinion pieces, biased news, and high-quality...

“There are often dangers from snow and wolves and night.” Bram Stoker’s “Dracula’s Guest,” which may or may not have been the first chapter of the original Dracula manuscript, is the focus of a Directed Reading Thinking Activity...

Scholars reflect upon their reading strengths and challenges to create personal reading goals. Participants use goal-setting verbiage in an accordion-style graphic organizer, a first step in writing a letter that details their reading...

As part of their study of Things Fall Apart, class members conduct a close reading of a section of Chinua Achebe's essay, "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness." Jigsaw groups then compare the voice in the essay...

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...

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...

From seed to jack-o-lantern, young scholars walk step-by-step through the life cycle of pumpkins with this fun art and science activity. After first participating in a shared reading of the children's book Pumpkin,...

Let's explore the rainforest by studying its inhabitants. Pupils continue reading an interview with a sloth scientist and answer text-dependent questions. Next, they engage in a class discussion to share the new facts they learned about...

Thanksgiving doesn't occur only once a year for the Haudenosaunee. Weave an instructional activity about reading closely with an inspiring message about eternal gratitude for all of the elements of creation into a unit on Native American...

Readers use sticky notes and a close reading guide to identify the gist of "My Pig" on pages 240–245 of The Omnivore's Dilemma. After reviewing their thoughts with peers, they answer text-dependent questions about the section.

It's time to level up and discover how video games affect the brain. Pupils explore the topic as they continue reading excerpts from an article about adolescent brain development and the digital revolution. Scholars also participate in a...

Young readers travel back to the time of the dinosaurs in this literature unit based on the story Dinosaurs Before Dark. Intended for use with upper-elementary special education young scholars, this resource provides reading...

Show your class how to read a map and decipher all of the markings and features. Start out by connecting maps to their homework from the night before and their current reading, in this case That Book Woman, and a related informational...

Old MacDonald had a ... dragon? A shared reading of this funny take on the classic children's song engages beginning readers as they learn about phonemes and alliteration.

This writing pre-assessment has minimal instruction but maximum support and encouragement. It begins with a review of the book, Rain School, through a think-pair-share and small group discussion. The discussion...

Do students really need to be taught how to read cartoons, comic books, and comic strips? Yes. Just as they need to learn how to read other forms of graphic text such as diagrams, photos, timetables, maps, charts, and tables. Young...

“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” Ambrose Bierce’s short story, is used to model how structural moves, the decisions an author makes about setting, point of view, time order, etc., can be examined to reveal an author’s purpose. Groups...

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. 

Pupils build confidence working with percents as they work several types of percent problems to increase their fluency. The resource contains two sets of problems specifically designed to build efficiency in finding solutions of basic...