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...

To conclude the study of the play, William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope, class members craft an in-class essay comparing Doescher's adaptation to George Lucas's film, Star Wars: A New Hope.

Introduce your young readers to fiction written by women authors. For each story, they explore the way these daughters discover and claim their own identities. Individually, class members use the literature to examine their role in their...

Dive into Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and determine what it means to conform in society, and discuss as a group with the thoughts and plans available in these documents. Included are multiple activities and brain targets that form the...

Is a college education necessary for success in today's world? The class investigates the question, along with others at the end of the sixth workshop in a 15-part series. The instructional activity has four parts with multiple...

Ninth graders examine how literature connects to real-life and see how irony aids in the development of theme. They read Shirley Jackson's The Lottery, and discuss elements of foreshadowing and situational irony. Then learners will write...

Enter the world of Harry Potter and learn new vocabulary at the same time. A high-interest reading passage provides insight into the history of Harry Potter. Follow-up activities incorporate key vocabulary strategies, such as using...

Explore the relationship between sports and physics in a cross-curricular lesson. Middle and high schoolers prepare a multimedia presentation based on a chosen sport. They answer five physics vocabulary questions about how the laws of...

Students examine the writing techniques of professional authors and apply them to their own work. In pairs, they email authors to discover the tricks of the trade. Students create their own Website for their work.

Learners conduct interviews. In this interviewing instructional activity, students read an interview of Pam Munoz Ryan to see where she got her ideas from in her story.  They interview someone and create a scrapbook to show details...

In this grammar worksheet, students review, define and write each one in a grammatically sound sentence. Students share their sentences with their classmates.

Students discuss times they predict what will happen next. They compare this to using the information given in a piece of literature to predict what will happen next in the story. Students listen as the teacher reads an excerpt from The...

Students examine the expressive and descriptive language used in the books "Dr. Xargle's Book of Earthlets" and "Planet of the Robots." In pairs they take notes about each other's physical appearance and conduct interviews, identify the...

Tenth graders  analyze the role of mentors, point of view, and prejudice using the texts of To Kill a Mockingbird and Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. In this literature analysis activity, 10th graders review Scout's...

Students create a title page, organize information, and write the introductory paragraph to a research paper.  In this research writing lesson plan, students discuss the elements of the title page and outline, then write one of...

What makes a novel a novel? Class members select a favorite novel, record their impressions on a worksheet, and then come together in groups to discuss the elements common to narrative writing. Next, they identify the characters, the...

Show your young researchers how to find information, brainstorm a topic, map or outline their own stories, and create rough drafts. This lesson plan also shows learners how to peer edit, conference with the teacher, and write their final...

Are you teaching Modernism to your class? Connect different areas of artistic expression in the Modernist Era. Learners read T.S. Eliot, view art by Pablo Picasso, and listen to a Modernist musical composition. This final assignment is...

This activity is better utilized as a peer-editing exercise and not as an activity on how to write counterarguments. Writers take their argumentative rough drafts, peer edit in groups of four, and review the author on common essay...

Students analyze speeches for or against continued military presence in Iraq. In this writing to argue lesson, students listen to speeches given before Parliament to identify rhetorical devices used.  Students compare techniques...

Fifth graders, after reading Island of the Blue Dolphins, explore map making using the Whole Language Approach.

Read a designated chapter of the novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and discuss the chapter summary in small groups. Groups present their summaries and answer questions specific to their chapter.

How did Elizabeth Cady Stanton use rhetoric to convince others of her views? Scholars begin reading "An Address by Elizabeth Cady Stanton," which argues that women should have voting rights. Pupils complete a Quick Write to analyze how...

The stories of the Silver People, the West Indies immigrants hired to work on the Panama Canal, come to life in a lesson about the building of the Panama Canal. Groups research why the canal was built, how it was build, the working...