Curated OER
My Antonia: Directed Reading Thinking Activity
Walk your pupils through the beginning of My Antonia by Willa Cather with a read-aloud-style activity. The goal is to make predictions and back them up with textual evidence.
Curated OER
Reading and Responding: Lesson 9
Follow this lesson, which is written more like a script, to practice reading a poem with your class. Pupils read "The Road Not Taken" and respond to five multiple choice questions on a provided worksheet. The plan leads you through a...
Curated OER
Mini-Lesson Planning for Inferences
Making inferences and drawing conclusions is a key component to successful active reading. Encourage your class to use context clues and prior knowledge to infer different elements of a story, including the setting, plot, and character...
Scholastic
Frindle Lesson Plan
"Who says a pen has to be called a pen? Why not call it a frindle?" Inspired by this quote from the award-winning novel written by Andrew Celements, this lesson allows children to invent their own terms for common classroom objects,...
PBS
Reading Adventure Pack: Archaeology
Readings of fiction and nonfiction texts followed by a series of activities put scholars in an archaeologist's shoes. Learners read two texts, Archaeologists Dig for Clues by Kate Duke and The Shipwrecked Sailor: An Egyptian Tale with...
Mary Pope Osborne, Classroom Adventures Program
The Backpack Travel Journals
Strap on those backpacks, it's time to travel through history with this literature unit based on the first four books of The Magic Tree House series. While reading through these fun stories, children create story maps, record interesting...
CPALMS
Point of View: A Close Reading of Two Bad Ants
Chris Van Allsburg's Two Bad Ants provides third graders with an opportunity to examine point of view and how the point of view of others may differ from their own.
Achieve3000
Context Clues and Idioms
Kids practice using five types of context clues (definition, synonym, antonym, example, and general) to decode idiomatic language.
EngageNY
Building Background Knowledge: The Dinka and Nuer Tribes
Building on a previous lesson plan, readers continue using context clues to learn new vocabulary. Additionally, they continue working on their Gathering Evidence graphic organizers, making connections between an informational text and A...
Have Fun Teaching
Making Inferences (11)
Picture this. Kids read a story starter about Josh and his dad, use details in the tale to infer what will happen next, and then draw a picture of this outcome.
August House
Anansi Goes to Lunch - Kindergarten
Greed is the theme of the West African folktale, Anansi Goes to Lunch and this multidisciplinary collection of lessons. First, scholars listen to a read aloud and participate in a grand conversation about the book's key details and...
Jumpstarting Journeys
Vowel Digraph Activities for au and aw
It can be awfully hard teaching young children how to read, but this phonics resource will make the job a little easier. Focusing on the au and aw vowel digraphs, this collection of engaging activities teaches beginning readers how to...
Lakeshore Learning
What's Next? Sequencing Story
First, next, then, and, finally are the words in focus of a sequencing lesson plan. Scholars listen to a read aloud of the tale "Lost in the Fog," and take part in a grand conversation about the story's sequence of events. They then show...
Have Fun Teaching
Making Inferences (8)
Kids examine the clues provided by a prompt to infer what will happen next. They then illustrate the short story.
Big History Project
Human Migration Patterns II
While humans have always been on the move, the period between 1400 and 1800 saw vast migrations of people between the East and the West. These migrations—whether through slavery or a desire to colonize new lands—shaped the modern world....
PBS
Cemetery Information
Cemeteries hold a lot of clues for history detectives. Using the provided outline as a guide, scholars research tombstones and inscriptions to learn more about those who came before.
Curated OER
My Antonia: Magic Squares (Vocabulary Strategy)
Help your pupils discover the power of context clues by teaching the this vocabulary strategy. Designed to go with words from Willa Cather's My Antonia, this exercise focuses on having individuals use their own words to define new...
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Around Town: Neighborhood and Community: English Language Development Lessons (Theme 3)
Here is a unit designed to support English language development. Scholars speak, move, and write to learn more about topics that focus on community and local concepts. The series of lessons aids to reinforce concepts including consonant...
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Surprise!: Challenge Activities (Theme 2)
Surprise! is the theme of this series of challenge activities. The surprise comes from the information your scholars will discover when researching topics such as alligators and crocodiles, living in other countries, becoming a...
Curated OER
Tangerine: Vocabulary
Here's a great way to make vocabulary words drawn from Edward Bloor's novel Tangerine memorable. Kids create a word square, and in one quadrant write the word. A picture goes in a second quadrant, the definition in a third, and a...
Scholastic
What Happened Next? (Grades K-4)
Explore the structure of narrative writing with this fun, collaborative instructional 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...
Curated OER
Mississippi Trial, 1955: Vocabulary Strategy (Acquisition)
Readers of Mississippi Trial, 1955 engage in a desktop teaching activity and teach other class members the meaning of a word from Christopher Crowe's novel using an embellished illustration of their word.
EngageNY
Building Background Knowledge: Jigsaw to Build and Share Expertise about the 2010 Haiti Earthquake, Part 1
Using the Jigsaw protocol, scholars study chunks of text from a speech given by former US presidents following a devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti. As they read the speech in small groups, they build background knowledge and share...
Read Works
Figurative Language
Here's a richly detailed unit, designed for second graders, that focuses on decoding figurative language, including similes, metaphors, personification and idioms.