Letter by letter, sound by sound, monitor the growth of your emergent readers with these assessment templates. Adaptable to the needs of individual students, these one-on-one assessments focus on children's ability to identify...

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...

Get your young bunnies crafting and designing cards for Easter as they hunt for eggs, sing songs, and learn prepositions with a sweet activity.

Pupils plan for a historical fiction narrative based on their previous research on expert trades from the Colonial Era. Individuals use the four-square graphic organizer to organize the information they want to be detailed in their four...

The multi-lesson, 47-page packet contains everything you need to ensure kids can recognize the clues provided to identify the type of text, the intended audience, and the author's purpose in writing the passage.

Class members read "Satyagraha," the concluding section of Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos' Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom, and Science, and analyze how the authors support their claim that terrible...

Young writers compose a gripping ending to their historical fiction narratives. Following the previous lesson plan, where learners wrote a bold beginning, class members examine exciting endings from a literary text. They then draft their...

What did the Crusades and plantations do with the global sugar spread? As class members continue their study of Sugar Changed the World, they examine how Crusaders brought sugar to Western Europe and how cultivating sugar led to the...

After rereading the full text of Walter Mosley's essay "True Crime," groups complete an evidence collection tool worksheet, and then class members independently draft a multi-paragraph, evidence-based response that identifies how Mosley...

A lesson begins with a discussion on gratitude—what does it mean, and for who are learners thankful? Scholars share their thoughts and feelings then choose a community worker to which they wish to share their gratitude. Writers compose a...

Class members examine the images Arson and Budhos use to depict the working conditions on the sugar plantations and consider how these images support the arguments the writers present in Sugar Changed the World.

After a brief discussion of their independent reading texts, pairs exchange their college narratives and, using the provided peer review tool, give their partner suggestions on how the draft may be improved.

What are the qualities of a strong written response to a prompt? Class members use the provided text analysis rubric to self-assess their responses to their homework assignments to prepare for the mid-unit assessment.

The opening exercise in this instructional unit introduces class members to the writing process they will follow to craft an informative, expository research paper that addresses their research question. To begin, writers are asked to...

Outlines are a great asset to essay planning. Scholars read and analyze a model essay about the importance of daily reading and consider how it would look in an outline format. Next, they outline their own informative essays about rules...

The supplemental text, "How Your Addiction to Fast Fashion Kills," allows learners to compare how other writers use evidence to support the argument that "rich countries benefit from harsh and abusive labor practices in poor countries."...

As part of a study of how writers structure their text so that readers understand events, class members do a close reading of "Is It Lawful to Make Slaves of Others Against Their Will?" a chapter in Aronson and Budhos' Sugar Changed the...

Class members conclude their reading of the supplemental text, “Bangladesh Factory Collapse: Who Really Pays for our Cheap Clothes?” and use the provided Evaluating Argument and Evidence Tool to analyze the evidence Anna McMullen uses to...

As a mid-unit assessment, writers use evidence from the supplemental reading articles "Globalization," "Our Addiction to Fast Fashion Kills," and "Bangladesh Factory Collapse: Who Really Pays for Our Cheap Clothes?" to draft an argument...

Building on the previous discussion of the supplemental reading article "Where Sweatshops Are a Dream," class members use the provided Evaluating Argument and Evidence Tool to identify the claims and evidence Nicholas Kristof uses to...

After analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of the evidence they have recorded on their argument outline tool, writers draft their essay's first body paragraphs, ensuring they have properly cited their source material.

What can consumers do to pressure companies to produce "ethically manufactured goods"? Readers examine the evidence Amy Odell uses in the supplemental text "How Your Addiction to Fast Fashion Kills" to support her argument and her...

What is the connection between the spread of ideas and the expansion of the sugar trade? Class members continue their reading of Sugar Changed the World and use an analysis tool to identify how critical ideas in the chapters are...

The second instructional activity in a unit about how writers develop their central ideas and use evidence to support their arguments focuses on the role that scholars at Jundi Shapur, "The World's First True University," played in the...