To gain a deeper understanding of the importance of the settings in The Kite Runner, readers use the provided poem frame to create three poems, one for each of the settings in Hosseini's novel.

Even reluctant writers will be able to craft poems using the poem making kit provided by this resource.

They Call Me Güero: A Border Kid's Poems by David Bowles is the focus of a five-week language arts unit unit. Fifth graders listen to various poems and participate in thoughtful discussions, examining vocabulary and learning new words in...

Why do writers choose the language they do? Here's a resource that has the poet himself answer that very question. Joseph Coelho explains why he chose the words and images he used in his poem, "If All the World Were Paper."

Young poets use word cards to prompt a metaphor poem comparing to very dissimilar items.

Passport photos are notoriously unflattering but here's an activity that encourages youngsters to create a poetic picture of themselves using each category on the passport as a prompt for a poem.

Young writers needn't be self-involved to craft a conceit. Directions for how to craft this form of extended metaphor, models, and a worksheet are all included in the packet.

Class members use the think-pair-share strategy to compare the views of W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington and to consider how each man's backgrounds influenced his philosophy.

It will cost you little to ask class members to engage in a free writing exercise that helps even reluctant writers craft a poem.

What do Lady Gaga and Dame Edith Sitwell have in common? As they examine Sitwell's poetry, class members learn that the similarities are far more than their unique appearance.

Three poems, “Under the Mangoes” by Jacqueline Bishop, Eleanor Wilner’s “What It Hinges On,” and Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” provide the text for an examination of alliteration, consonance, and assonance. After...

The poems of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson are the focus of a unit that asks readers to consider how an artist's life and changes in society influences his or her work. After careful study of Whitman's and Dickinson's perspectives on...

How can something be true even if it didn't happen? Invite your classes to investigate the truths found in the world of magical realism as they analyze short stories, poems, informational texts, video, and art from this genre.

Incorporate art and poetry into an early elementary science instructional activity about cloud formation. With fun and engaging activities that follow a natural learning progression, youngsters will develop key vocabulary and conceptual...

Teach your class how to investigate research sources. You can start out with this presentation, which lays out a easy strategy for asking questions and taking down answers that cover the important information.

The works of Carol Ann Duffy, Scottish poet and Britain's 2009 poet laureate, serve as a model for a writing activity that asks class members to select a character card, brainstorm lists of words, phrases, actions, and items associated...

What is stereotyping, and how do we handle stereotyping in our daily interactions? Your young historians will not only have the opportunity to learn about the first African American woman to publish a short story–Frances Ellen...

After reading Loree Leedy's There's a Frog in My Throat: 440 Animal Sayings a Little Bird Told Me, kids create and illustrate their own poems that convey the meaning of an idiom. The poems are then transferred into Shutterfly's Photo...

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...

Oh, what fun! Young logophiles and neologists create a dictionary-sounding definition for imaginary words and try to fool their classmates.

As part of a study of poetic devices, kids are asked to identify the assonance, consonance, and alliteration found in a series of lines of poetry, and then identify the rhyme scheme and the types of rhyme found in Poe's "Annabel Lee,"...

After watching the documentary Dark Water about a traditional Chumash ceremony and reading a Chumash origin story, viewers are asked to create a coat of arms and to craft an essay that details a family tradition or their own origin story.

Encourage readers to determine if Hamlet's madness is actually divinest sense. Class members analyze the words of the play before studying related texts, including T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," scenes from...