After readers finish the story Deep-Sea Monster, they utilize this two-page worksheet to write short-answer responses to questions about the story. The questions posed require critical thinking, not simply recalling details from the...

Scholars summarize sections of a book and compile them to create a book trailer. They are assigned sections of a book to read and summarize before recording as short video segments. The segments are put together in order to create a book...

A superb interdisciplinary approach highlights this lesson which incorporates space science knowledge and narrative skills. After reading The Magic School Bus, two excellent poems, and watching a video, all about our solar system, young...

Simple, but suitable, this lesson gives mini-meteorologists a glimpse at ozone in the atmosphere. By reading an article, they find that ozone in the stratosphere is vital to life, but ozone in the troposphere is problematic. A reading...

Vladek's attitudes are difficult for many young learners to understand. Prepare your class for the events represented in Art Speigelman's graphic novel with a pre-reading activity that has them read articles about and interviews with...

Difficulties with brain injuries still continue today. After reading Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science, class members read a series of modern personal essays about brain injuries and choose an essay to compare...

In many places in the world, people go to great lengths to get books to read. This beginning-of-the-year activity uses pictures of people reading in extraordinary situations to stimulate effective listening and speaking using the...

It's all about perspective. Scholars view a note from the author in Eight Days. They determine the gist and discuss what they can learn about the author's background based on the note. They then complete a fishbowl activity in...

Why do we read primary source documents? What can they give us that other writings cannot? Provide your learners with any of the primary sources attached here (there are seven), and have them complete the graphic organizer (which opens...

"How important is freedom to you and your family?" The guiding question becomes much more powerful after your class reads and responds to a passage from a historical novel. While reading the passage, they complete a graphic organizer...

A series of well-written activities, these lessons prompt middle schoolers reading below grade level (at a second, third, or fourth grade level) to use poetry to practice basic reading skills. They rhyme, build words, make inferences,...

Take the fear out of reading with this series of three lessons from HotWire Magazine about fears and phobias. Each instructional activity contains pre-reading and post-reading activities aimed at improving learners' reading comprehension...

After reading up to page 371 of Percy Jackson and The Olympians: The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan, get insight into how Percy felt making a major decision through active discussion strategies that enable both academic...

Judge Learned Hand's "Spirit of Liberty" speech delivered during the July, 1944 "I Am an American Day" celebration is the subject of a close reading activity that models for learners how to approach a dense, difficult text.

Bring multi-cultural experiences and literature into your language arts class with this lesson. Here, young readers explore the points of view of first and second-generation Asian immigrants with a list of various fiction and nonfiction...

Step into the hopeful and tragic world of Anne Frank with this instructional activity on reading in context. After complete a variety of activities related to the first two scenes of The Diary of Anne Frank, eighth graders...

Following brief instruction about the Iran Hostage Crisis during Jimmy Carter's presidency, small groups read three-page sections from the diary of hostage Robert C. Ode. They write editorials from the perspective of either U.S. citizens...

Providing learners with a solid armory of reading strategies is a good way to help them build better reading comprehension. The teacher will model how to use a questioning checklist to better understand what she is reading. Pupils will...

Show your scholars how adding an affix changes the entire meaning of a word; they focus on the suffix -able. You'll find a complete script here, but if you don't want to read this verbatim, use it simply as an outline. Learners...

Should schools continue to teach cursive writing? After reading and considering the merits of a series of arguments on both sides of this proposition, class members choose a side of the issue and craft their own argument, drawing support...

Use the fairy tale Rumpelstiltskin to teach your third grade class about descriptive writing. Following a teacher read-aloud of the story, the class brainstorms a list of adjectives describing the main character. Learners use this list...

A four corners pre-reading activity introduces class members to the major themes in Victor Martinez's award winning novel, Parrot in the Oven: Mi Vida.

Be more specific. Scholars take a look at domain-specific vocabulary by discussing an anchor chart. They then look at vocabulary words recorded from paragraphs one through five in Water of Life. After analyzing the vocabulary used in the...

Read and repeat. Scholars repeat the strategies for digging deeper into text from lesson two. This time they focus on Middle Ages Excerpt 2. Learners write unfamiliar words in the word catcher and use details from the text to add to the...