Students reflect on their experiences and interest in volunteer service. They develop service plans for communities in need around the world and connect them to virtual volunteers.

Discover the environmental and economic impact of global warming. After reading an article, emerging environmentalists identify how different countries are responding to the Kyoto Protocol. They research emission laws and write a news...

Weaving is an important part of Navajo culture. Read The Goat in the Rug to your fourth and fifth graders, and give them a glimpse into the process of rug making from the point of view of a goat! They will learn new vocabulary words and...

Discuss bullying, folk tales, and more using this resource. Learners read the story The Lion and the Mouse by Toni and Slade Morrison, engage in cause and effect activities, make predictions, and discuss bullying. This is a motivating...

It's so interesting to see kids respond to articles about education. To start the day, prompt learners to discuss the words colorblindness and diversity. Then, split your class in two and have one side read an article from 2007 and...

Share pupil responses to an interactive slide show about a design initiative intended to help the world's poor. The class works in groups to brainstorm ideas, and then prepares sketches of their own design solutions. Each rendering...

Connect the ideas of jazz improvisation and art to writing poetry. Learners collaborate and write different lines of poetry, imitating the jazz styles of improvisation and freewriting. Take a close look at the poems "Tenebrae" by Yusef...

How did the ancient people of Egypt preserve their dead so well that their bodies are still recognizable today? Learn the painstakingly complex process they used for preservation. Young scholars read and summarize a narrative detailing...

Supporting characters need detail and characteristics just like a main character. Keep your budding authors entrenched in detail as they write their novels. This lesson focuses on developing supporting characters using personal...

"There comes an end to all things" and ending a study of horror fiction with a multimedia project is "like starting a stone. . . away the stone goes, starting others. . ." In this case, groups start with a question generated by Dr....

Select an article that explores people of another culture. After reading it as a class, distribute copies of this worksheet. It asks for a brief summary, encourages readers to make text-to-self connections, and asks learners to identify...

First graders participate in a guided reading lesson plan. In this guided reading lesson plan, 1st graders read David's Drawings by Cathryn Falwell, which is a realistic fiction book on the DRA:16 level. They determine the author's...

A great way to connect social studies with language arts, a resource on Mary Henry's historical diary reinforces the concepts of primary and secondary sources. It comes with an easy-to-understand lesson plan, as well as the reference...

What is a graphic novel? How does it differ from a traditional novel? These questions launch a discussion of Fabio Celoni and Mirka Andolfo's graphic novel adaptation of The Kite Runner. Through a series of literature circle discussions,...

Instruct your readers to scrounge through the pages of Maniac Magee in search for descriptive passages or words they may use to write poetry. As they look for meaningful, sensory descriptors in Jerry Spinelli's novel, readers...

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...

Listen, protect, connect! Using the resource, teachers learn how psychological first aid helps scholars adjust after a crisis or school emergency. They discover how to observe changes in pupils' school performance, listen and offer...

Work on author's purpose with this lesson, which focuses on sequence of events and audience as well.  Middle and high schoolers describe the 50 State Quarters Program for background information. After discussing the images on the...

Explore figurative language with your secondary class. Extending a language arts unit, the lesson prompts middle schoolers to examine how an author's word choice establishes a story's tone, possibly using metaphors, similes,...

Although this lesson is based on “Final Word,” Craig Wilson’s USA Today column, the strategies could be adapted to any local columnist. After reading three articles independently, groups share observations about content and style used by...

Mentor texts are a great way to demonstrate how to write with purpose. Pupils will be reintroduced to two well-known books and then asked to think about them from the writer's point of view. They will see that the author had to use basic...

Not only is this lesson plan about story retell, main events, and making predictions, it's also about plants. Youngsters will read the tale, The Tiny Seed as they explore the plant life cycle and early literacy skills. The lesson plan is...