“The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?” Prediction, verification, judgment, and extensions of thought are all part of a Directed ReadingThinking Activity (DRTA) developed for Measure for Measure. The rationale, assessments...

Challenge your class to hold a discussion about the theme of death in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead without direct teacher guidance. After going over the discussion protocols and quotes from the text, learners move in a circle...

Looking for a great lesson on how to write a biography? Here, middle schoolers draw from magazine articles, novels, historical figures, and current events to choose a person, or character to write about in a biography. They follow a...

There's nothing like the prospect of writing a scary story to get your middle schoolers' writing juices flowing! In the lesson presented here, pupils listen to scary short stories read to them by the teacher. Then, a discussion ensues...

Class members take center stage as groups perform scenes from Ian Doescher's William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope. Actors are encouraged to add stage directions to the script, as well as create costumes and props to...

"Can the connotation of a word or phrase create bias or prejudice?" The activities in this SMART Board lesson are directed toward this question, which will be sure to incite lots of opinions and ideas. The SMART Board file guides them...

Direct instruction on punctuation rules for titles is followed by collaborative practice in class. Two worksheets with aesthetically engaging graphic design provide practice. For 12 examples, small groups either underline, italicize, or...

As Nick wanders the grounds of Gatsby's mansion, he observes the behaviors of the rowdy guests and listens to the music pouring over the lawn. Bring the music of the jazz age into the classroom with Louis Armstrong's "West End Blues,"...

Practice expository and creative writing with your class. Pupils use magazines to find pictures, cut them out, and create a collage. This work of art is then used as a writing prompt. They describe the collage in either a creative or...

Examine the differences between totalitarianism and democracy in this writing lesson plan. Using the same format and theme from Great Expectations, young writers work in pairs to compose their own short stories. They follow guidelines...

Pre-writers get ready to print letters with this tracing worksheet. Youngsters complete two images by tracing lines. They start at each dot, following the arrows from top to bottom. There are 13 straight lines and one circle to complete,...

Is your class ready to read The Count of Monte Cristo? Use the Cloze procedure to determine if the text is a good level for your readers. The first page details the procedure and how to score the text. The following two pages are the...

How do pupils relate paired passages to each other? Here's a resource that helps! The lesson includes a short story and a poem as a set of paired reading passages, followed by some analysis questions. It also includes an essay template...

High schoolers choose an interesting view for an art relief project. They outline their composition, and shade their relief using charcoal pencil. The results are fabulous! One nice thing about this art project is that the materials...

Singing is a wonderful way to express an idea of any kind. This lesson is written expressly for use in directing a high school chorus. They work on using four-part harmony, expression, and melodic intervals while singing a Jewish folk...

Second graders read the story The Stolen Smell and participate in many language arts based activity connected to the story. They participate in discussions, vocabulary work, analyzing the story, public speaking, illustrating pictures,...

Designed as a postreading activity for Act II of Cyrano de Bergerac, this resource uses the QAR strategy to get readers thinking deeper about the texts they're reading. Explicit directions for the teacher are included, so don't fret if...

Jonathan Safran Foer's phrase, "heavy boots," becomes the focus of a class discussion of grief and sadness. During the reading of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, individuals place examples of their own experiences with these topics...

Class members are asked to consider how they would respond to situations faced by characters in Great Expectations. After completing one exercise as guided practice, individuals are presented with a second problematic situation and...

“The crux of the matter is whether total war in its present form is justifiable. . .” After reading “The Aftermath,” the final chapter of Hiroshima, class members use a Question Answer Response (QAR) strategy to reflect on issues raised...

Knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation. Class members use Bloom's taxonomy to craft six levels of discussion questions for Chris Crowe's novel, Mississippi Trial, 1955. Model questions from Chapter 3, a...

Readers of Ordinary People employ a cubing strategy based on Bloom’s Taxonomy to analyze, from multiple perspectives, an excerpt from Chapter 10 of Judith Guest’s novel.  The excerpt, a rationale and complete directions for the...

The Secret Garden, is a wonderful book to read with your class. After reading, why not employ the lesson plan presented here as a follow up activity? In it, pupils create character charts that portray the tremendous changes that...

Each page of a comprehension packet that accompanies James and The Giant Peach requires learners to think, comprehend, focus on characters, make text-to-self and text-to-world connections, and build vocabulary through context....