Funny poems don't have to rhyme—but it helps! Learn how to use rhyming words to add humor to funny, clever, or just plain silly poems.

High schoolers synthesize the information they've learned from each chapter of Natalie Babbitt's Tuck Everlasting with a creative summarizing activity. With a graphic organizer for all of the book's chapters, readers title...

Sensory details can enhance the reading experience, especially during a guided imagery reading. Young readers close their eyes and listen to a passage from Sharon Creech's Walk Two Moons before responding to discussion questions and...

Building upon prior lessons in the series, this reading and writing exercise requires pupils to look back at their own writing, track character development in the novel The Cay, and analyze how Phillip has changed. The reading focus is...

The opening chapters of Mark Twain's masterpiece, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, can be daunting for some readers. A reader's theater assignment divides the second chapter of the novel into a seven-role script, allowing...

Here is a great textbook chapter on China's establishment as a communist state in 1949 and the effects of World War II on the nation. The first page prompts learners to complete a timeline activity as they read the material,...

Can your class convince the townspeople to support the rally in Carl Hiaasen's Hoot? Have your young writers exercise their persuasive writing skills in a lesson that prompts them to write a letter or a speech based on Chapter 18...

Eliminate the hard work of creating an entire literature unit with this reading guide for the novel Sarah, Plain and Tall. From background information about the author and her motivation for writing the story to...

Geology rocks — literally! A geology chapter offers eleven activities at four different levels. Scholars enjoy completing hands-on experiments before applying critical thinking skills following a share, process, generalize, apply,...

Practice vocabulary and grammar with a series of activities from Jack London's White Fang. Middle schoolers fill in missing phrases, choose which story events are true or false, and practice key vocabulary words in a packet of...

Supplement your Maniac Magee lesson plans with a packet of student materials. Included here is a variety of questions about the text. Pupils complete multiple choice and short-answer questions and choose from a variety of extension...

Encourage your learners to examine the setting in Theodore Taylor's The Cay. Pupils work in small groups to put together a description of the setting before reading two more chapters of the book. They use their double-entry journals to...

Look back at the third chapter of The Cay with your class. Pupils will conduct a close reading, taking a second look at a chunk of text and responding to a series of text-dependent questions. Wrap up with an analytical writing prompt...

Focus on plot and the impact-specific events in The Cay. Class members use their double-entry journals, created in a previous lesson in this series, to record their thinking about the guiding question as they read chapters 15 through 17....

Designed as a review of verbs studied in first three chapters in this grammar series, the 16-page packet includes activities, worksheets, games, and assessments.

Get started with The Cay. First, provide some background information and images that relate to the novel. Then pupils can create double-entry journals. Once that is complete, read the first two chapters, encouraging individuals to record...

Readers respond to a series of questions focused onJuliet Marillier's young adult novel Wildwood Dancing, and crafted to reflect the levels in Bloom's Taxonomy.

Class members identify bullying in contemporary texts and role play how they might change those scenes to examples of anti-bullying. They then re-define their initial definitions of bullying and discuss what they...

What did medicine look like a hundred years ago? Two hundred years ago? Invite small groups to conduct research on the history of a chosen medical advancement before reading Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science....

Your students already know when they like a story and when they don't, but they may not know that the plots of these stories are shaping that opinion. Like all resources in this series, the two activities and quizzes provided here deal...

Building on the previous activity in this series of lesson seeds, this plan focuses on the use of dialect in Theodore Taylor's novel, The Cay. Class members examine specific lines of text, use their reading journals to respond to the...

If you're looking for a way to structure your unit on Jack London's White Fang, use a well-organized guide to bring the intrigue of the novel to your middle school classroom. Covering a biography of the author, main background and...

When is it okay to go against authority and what can happen if you do? This is the leading question in this activity to accompany your classroom reading of The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi. After reading...

Even though readers investigate matters of the heart, this activity promotes the inner workings of learners' brains. The fifth lesson of six has the teacher first model the strategy to the class before having small groups practice. To...