Fourth grade reading students study art works by famous artists. They use various tools for learning about the artist, and they present their information by writing and speaking about the artist. They also create artwork in the style of...

Students write a personal account of slavery seen from the eyes of a slave trader, a slave plantation owner, a fugitive slave, or a working slave.

Learners research and identify how Holocaust events affected lives of real people who lived in Europe from 1933 through 1945 and after, and create original artwork, poetry, and essays that reflect understanding of Holocaust, and its...

Students use poetry to understand conflict in the Middle East. In this poetry lesson, students read persona poems and use the poetry  and a novel as mentor text to guide their own poem about peace in the Middle East.

Students create commercials using a digital camera. After brainstorming their ideas, they spend three days writing their commercials. Students practice and edit their commercials and then present them for review.

Introduce magic and imagination into your classroom with a poetry activity. Learners read the poem "Tiny" by Mandy Coe and use their magic tickets to visit any place they can think of! The final result is a poem describing where they...

Introduce your class to the characters from My Antonia by Willa Cather in a unique way. Given a hypothetical situation about an atomic bomb shelter and a list of character descriptions, pupils must decide which characters get to...

As part of a unit study of The Hobbit, class members engage in an activity that asks group to practice the skills needed to reach consensus in a discussion.

It's all in the presentation. Readers take a look at author's presentation in the article Rachel Carson: Sounding the Alarm on Pollution. Scholars work together to complete a Comparing and Contrasting Authors’ Presentation graphic...

Invite your young writers to take the reins with writing dialogue. Using two characters of their own creation, kids work with partners and then individually to write short conversations.

Uncover the exciting world of the Roaring Twenties with The Great Gatsby study guide. Individuals become critics as they write a review of the production. Scholars also read historical information and analyze the differences between the...

Can science ever go too far? Learners explore this topic with the Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde study guide. They read about the connection between scientific experimentation in fiction and real life and then compare a scene from the novella...

Art can enhance the understanding of history. That's the big idea in a lesson that has young scholars read Randall Jarrell's poem "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" and an excerpt from John Hersey's Hiroshima, which provide a...

A parent's influence on a child is one of the most formative factors in developing life. Discuss the importance of the parental relationships in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club and H.G. Bissinger's Friday Night Lights with a written...

Which character bears responsibility for the tragedy in Shakespeare's Macbeth? Scholars participate in a gallery walk and complete a Quick Write to support their claims about which character is to blame.

Put yourself in my shoes! Scholars work through the Outline Tool from the previous lesson plan to develop a claim before developing a counterclaim about selling human tissue. Learners also create supporting claims using an outline tool....

How does a soliloquy differ from a monologue? Scholars read the first soliloquy from Shakespeare's Hamlet and compare it to Claudius's monologue. They also engage in a group discussion about Hamlet's character development.

Let's get to the gist! Pupils work in research teams to gather information about specific refugee experiences from Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Kurdistan. Scholars then try to find the gist of informational texts about their topics,...

Young researchers create a class Cascading Consequences chart to see how the industrial food chain affects people, animals, and the environment. They also work in teams to complete a Stakeholders chart for the industrial food chain model...

Students read a New York Times article in order to examine the importance of cultural artifacts. They create essays from the point of view of one cultural artifact to demonstrate the knowledge they gained by doing research.

Is the wolf from "The Three Little Pigs" really big and bad, or is he just misunderstood?  To analyze the effect of point of view, middle schoolers read Jon Scieszka's The True Story of the Three Little Pigs and evaluate the...

Upper elementary learners read about jobs on a cattle drive and the lives of cowboy during U.S. Westward Expansion. They create a "Help Wanted" poster for one of the jobs. After reading primary source accounts of cowboys, they write...

Students analyze people's choices from different points of view. They read different scenarios and explain how they would react personally in that situation. Then they analyze what they would do in another character's position and...

While an interesting lesson idea involving the exploration of a story about an Asian American boy named Imduk, a teacher would need to have assess to the Scott Foresman reading program to make this work. If not, a teacher could use...