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.

Before beginning The Grapes of Wrath, readers create a KWHL chart recording what they already know about the Dust Bowl, the author, and the book, what they want to know, and where they might find answers to these questions. After reading...

Natasha Wing's story The Night Before Thanksgiving is a great way to incorporate rhyme and literature into the Thanksgiving season. Learners make text-to-self connections, recall main events, and choose post-reading activities...

Kurt Vonnegut's short story "Harrison Bergeron" engages adolescents with its theme about the dangers of complete societal equality. Learners complete a graphic organizer to track literary elements in the story, as well as an inference...

Social media and United States history combine as your young historians design a Facebook page for two major defendants of landmark Supreme Court cases. The resource includes a detailed rubric for research and page design, as well as a...

Did you know that prior to the American Revolution, Alabama was a part of the British empire and called New West Florida? Class members research the economic, political, and social realities of this territory and compare...

Read and discuss a variety of books by different authors and have your class create their own book. They will identify the different parts of a book, then using a story they have already written, they enter their story and information...

From baseball and tennis to capture the flag and four-square, here is a great document that will help you design your next unit on a sport-related activity. 

What book are you currently reading? If you want your class to delve into the life of the author, give them this author study worksheet. Basic questions like where the author lives (or lived), what hardships the author encountered, and...

Fourth graders investigate how to create a document named "About The Author". The teacher uses a LCD projector to guide the instruction and provide examples for the class. They also include graphics in the document and practice accessing...

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...

Combine hearts with minds in a reading comprehension activity with a Valentine's Day theme. Steven Kroll's The Biggest Valentine Ever, named one of the best books for kids in 2014, provides kids with an opportunity to practice their...

Explore this story involving prejudice and racism to enhance learners' comprehension skills. The story The Jacket by Andrew Clements involves an African American boy who is falsely accused of stealing someone's jacket. This teacher's...

Ease the anxiety of preparing for the AP English exams with a four-page packet test-takers can use to record key information about major works they have read. In addition to biographical information about the author, historical...

Who wrote To Kill a Mockingbird? What about Wuthering Heights? Prodigal Summer? Encourage learners to study the authors of their beloved books. This form will help them organize information as they learn about different authors. After...

Encourage close reading of the text and a focus on how Sandra Cisneros' develops her characters with an activity that asks teams to sort, group, and label character descriptions from The House on Mango Street.

A hot-button topic in schools today is bullying, and although there is heightened awareness of this problem, information about specific steps schools can take to combat the problem and create a positive environment is difficult to find....

Rainbow Fish is on the move again and kids will enjoy these activities designed to accompany a reading of Marcus Pfister's Rainbow Fish Discovers the Deep Sea. A great packet to add to your curriculum library.

Introduce the major themes in Markus Zusak's award-winning novel, The Book Thief, with an anticipation guide that asks readers to agree or disagree with a series of statements.    

Helen Lester's wonderfully wacky, Tacky and the Winter Games, is the core text featured in a resource packet that includes a prediction exercise, an activity menu, vocabulary flash cards, and book review worksheet. A great way to cheer...

Middle schoolers are encourage to try their hand at traditional Oceania tapa art by crafting their own cloth using brown paper bags. Included in the resource is background information about the cultures of Oceania and their art. 

Who would ever think to go to sea in a sieve? Only Edward Lear's Jumblies! The poem "The Jumblies" is the inspiration for these poetry reading and writing activities that ask learners to think about how strangers are different, consider...

Cross-comparison, the technique of focusing on two different texts with the same themes, motifs, events, etc., is employed in an exercise that asks groups to examine two different translations of “The Ruin,” a poem, written in Old...

The assassination of Medgar Evers. The integration of the University of Alabama. The March on Washington. The "I Have a Dream" speech. Created by the Alabama History Education Initiative, this resource examines how the events...