Have a little fun teaching your class about inferences with this short and simple guess who exercise. Provided with five short passages describing different types of people, young learners must read each one...

The seventh lesson plan in this unit on colonial trade assesses fourth graders' ability to use details from an informational text to make inferences and create a piece of informative writing. The included assessment begins with learners...

A mid-unit assessment challenges scholars to use their close reading skills to identify the main idea and key details. After reading a brief excerpt, learners answer a series of questions—multiple-choice, short answer—complete a graphic...

What was life like in colonial America? Follow this lesson and your pupils will find out what people in colonial times did for work and for fun. Ask learners to compare and contrast the two texts and explain what the reading helped them...

Allow your class to figure out what they will be studying through an inquiry-based anticipatory set that involves analysis of mystery documents and practice with making inferences. The lesson plan document includes a detailed description...

Imagine what life might be like in a different galaxy. That's the challenge young scientists take on in a warm-up activity designed to prepare them for a close reading of Ruth Stone's poem "In the Next Galaxy." After class members share...

In the tenth instructional activity of this unit, young scholars learn to categorize information as they continue researching their colonial trade. During guided practice, the teacher models how to read informational text slowly while...

Shirley Jackson's short story, "Charles," provides middle schoolers with an opportunity to practice their close reading skills. Using the provided list of prompts, scholars read and reread the story, then create a multimodal response to...

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...

Partner up! After an I have/who has activity, readers partner with one of their discussion appointments to add evidence from chapters 11-13 in To Kill a Mockingbird to the Atticus Note-catcher. Partners then share with the class and add...

Lesson 6 of this extensive unit finally has your class begin to work their way through specific articles from the text of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Before examining the rights actually detailed in the...

In the first lesson plan of this unit on colonial trade, fourth graders gain background knowledge of different jobs performed by early colonists. The class begins with a slide show presentation that includes a variety of great...

Conduct a close reading of chapter 9 of The Cay. Read the chapter again and ask pupils to respond to a list of included text-dependent questions. Finish the class with the provided writing assignment, which asks learners to use textual...

Inntroduce primary learners to essential critical reading strategies with an activity based on James Reeves' poem, "The Wind."  Learners listen as the poem is read, first as a riddle, and then re-read with the title visible. The...

A social justice lesson plan focuses on the Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia which struck down laws that prohibited marriages between African Americans and white Americans. The lesson plan begins with class members examining a...

Readers engage in discussion with partners to answer questions about A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park. Next, they complete exit tickets, writing about how the author creates different points of view for her characters.

Aid your pupils in understanding the terms explicit and inferred while teaching them about colonial farmers. The third activity in the module builds off the previous activity and focuses heavily on inference. Learners analyze a...

Whether new to teaching Beowulf or an experience pro, you'll find much to like in a richly detailed unit plan that asks readers to consider how the epic represents the difficulty in defining good and evil but also reflects the changing...

Fulfilling a dream requires a lot of hard work. A study guide for the novel A Single Shard shares the dream of a young Korean orphan. As readers work through the guide, they answer comprehension questions about Tree-ear and the...

Winnie the Pooh lands in a gorse-bush plant in chapter one of A.A. Milne's beloved children's novel, Winnie-the-Pooh. With the novel study, scholars research three interesting facts about the plant. They also compose a four-line poem...

Good discussion questions, quizzes, and tests teach as well as assess. Readers of The Great Gatsby will learn much from the materials in a 36-page packet designed to help students prepare for the AP Literature exam. Included in the...

“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...

What are the effects of a good literary cliffhanger? Using the novel study for Paula Fox's The Slave Dancer, pupils consider why the author chose to end the first chapter with suspense. They also answer text-based questions, practice new...

Enrich a unit on The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros with a selection of related activities. The packet contains nine activities that go from pre-reading through wrapping up the novel. Young readers work on studying...