When your class members have completed the novel Esperanza Rising, they will be ready to write an expository essay on how Esperanza responds to events and what this says about her character. Set your pupils up for success by...

Through this exercise, high schoolers identify character traits present in Romeo and Juliet. They listen to an excerpt from "The Office of Christian Parents: Showing How Children Are to be Governed" and participate in a Socratic...

Readers analyze an excerpt from Kate DiCamillo's novel Because of Winn-Dixie. They read silently, and then hear it read aloud. Definitions for underlined vocabulary words are in the margin, and other potentially difficult words...

Does your class love reading cartoons? Use their talents and interests to examine the process of writing a story they wish to tell through a cartoon. They develop the beginning, middle, and end of a story based on their original...

Use the dystopian novel After by Francine Prose to spark discussion about individual and student rights. Learners read the novel, evaluating how far a school can go to control its attendees. As they read, scholars...

If you are beginning Laurence Yep's Dragonwings, this will provide activities for the first five chapters. The objectives include making connections to oneself and the world, organizing information and events, vocabulary acquisition,...

Body paragraphs are the building blocks of every essay. Pupils view and discuss a model essay using a rubric to evaluate one of its supporting paragraphs. Next, scholars use what they've learned to continue drafting their own literary...

Come up with a list of requirements for this expository essay on Esperanza's character in Esperanza Rising as a class and use the list to guide class writing. Here, learners will complete the first paragraph, discuss their notes for the...

Sharpen those pencils; it's time to write! Scholars begin writing the first body paragraph of their literary analysis essays. Additionally, pupils use graphic organizers to analyze a character's point of view from Laurence Yep's...

Bring Edgar Allan Poe's spooky story to life! After reading the short story "The Tell-Tale Heart," middle and high schoolers identify the theme, character traits, irony, and other story concepts. During pre-reading, they take notes,...

Turning 11 comes with a range of emotions. Explore those emotions by reading the short story "Eleven" by Sandra Cisneros. Readers analyze the main character's reactions to the events of her day. Then, they write an essay describing what...

Learners use reading strategies for Night of the Twister. For this reading strategies lesson, students name five major catastrophes and books about each. Learners complete a vocabulary section, make inferences and predictions, read the...

Develop historical analysis and interpretation with your older students. They will study and analyze three given interpretations of Christopher Columbus' life, which includes significant events, his character, and the impact he made on...

Double click that mouse because you just found an amazing lesson! This cross-curricular Ornithology lesson incorporates literature, writing, reading informational text, data collection, scientific inquiry, Internet research, art, and...

Start off your day with a quick reading comprehension quiz about chapter three of Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan. After they complete the quiz, pupils participate in a discussion and look closely at the text. A strong Common Core...

Continue work on the two-piece poem that compares two characters from Esperanza Rising. Give class members a few minutes to finish their drafts. After they have a complete product, model how to critique and edit the poems with one group....

Conduct a written literary discussion and diminish stress about public writing. Class members, already arranged into literature circles, compose and post responses to novels, signing with initials or class number. The process continues...

Decisions, decisions. Scholars take a close look at making decisions by discussing the character Sam in chapters one through eight of Frightful’s Mountain. Partners discuss whether Sam should interact with Frightful and then...

Students discover how writers put their feelings into language. They identify words of emotion and imagery and see their experience as an important base for language use and writing skills. They use colorful words when describing a...

Close the unit on Esperanza Rising with an in-class analytic essay on how Esperanza changes over the course of the novel. Writers can use any of their notes and work from the unit as well as their drafts of the first two paragraphs of...

Fourth graders investigate the style of diary writing as its own genre of literature. They read Harriet The Spy in order to have a text for this literature study. Students use the skill of prediction to preview the story, and then...