Urban communities are the focus of a series of lessons created to meet specific needs using differentiated instruction. A pre-assessment designates scholars into three groups based on their ability level. Small groups take part in...

Middle schoolers read and review informational texts, analyze cause and effect, and distinguish fact from opinion. They assess a "one-minute mystery" you read aloud for cause and effect relationships. Resource includes complete set of...

For scholars who need a challenge in the classroom, here is a unit for you. Learners explore topics such as animals, sports, helpers at home, the past, and funny things that have happened in their lives. Youngsters also engage...

When you come across an unfamiliar word in a text, do you skip it and move on? Practice using context clues to identify words you don't know with a thorough set of language arts lessons. The resource reinforces close reading and critical...

Using the presidential election of 1960 as background information, learners consider the push of electoral reform. They read about the events and issues surrounding President Kennedy's win in 1960 and compare them to the same issues...

The dog is big. The mouse is little. Using vocabulary words introduced in the previous lesson, kids read, or are read, sentences and examine images that contrast big and little.

Keep an eye on the growth of your sixth graders' reading and writing skills with the help of this practice Common Core assessment. Working their way through the six included fiction and nonfiction reading passages, learners answer a...

Check in on the development of your fifth graders' reading and writing skills with this Common Core-designed assessment. Given a series of six reading passages ranging from narrative stories to informational texts, young...

Student's read Arthur's Nose and view the changes in Arthur's nose. For this Arthur lesson, students define difficult vocabulary, discuss choices and sing to the tune of Old MacDonald had a Farm. Students create a new nose for Arthur.

How does recognizing the author's purpose help you draw conclusions about a topic? Using two articles (both are attached), learners brainstorm why each author wrote each article. Are their purposes similar or different? Learners use a...

After watching Treasure in the Sea, a documentary about Channel Islands National Park and the video First Contact, about the voyage of Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo to the Channel islands, groups research and then compare the...

Physicists Herman Branson and Tannie Stovall provide young scholars with two very different perceptions of the status of African American physicists in the 1960s. After reading and comparing the bios of these two men, class members read...

Take two. After a mini lesson covering sentence structure and transition words, scholars revise their End of Unit 3 Assessment based on feedback. Writers self-score their assessments against row three in the Newspaper Article Rubric.

Should Juneteenth be recognized as a national holiday? To prepare to take a stance on this question, young historians first analyze the Emancipation Proclamation and compare it to Lincoln's first Inaugural Address. Scholars then read an...

Was Puritan society governed as more of a theocracy or democracy? After comparing and contrasting a series of primary source documents, middle and high schoolers form small groups and debate the question.

After class members brainstorm a list of current social and political issues, groups each select a different topic from the list to research. Teams create a portfolio of at least 10 examples of stories about their issue, stories that...

Young journalists use the E.S.C.A.P.E. (evidence, source, context, audience, purpose, and execution) strategy to evaluate historical and contemporary examples of bias in the news. The class then uses the provided discussion questions to...

Explore the islands of Hawaii. Investigate Hawaiian culture and compare their personal traditions to Hawaiian traditions. They locate Hawaii on a map and research the history of Hawaii.

Young scholars examine newspapers to research public opinion about the Holocaust. In this critical thinking lesson, students research the information Americans received in U.S. newspapers about events like Kristallnacht, the Berlin...

Practice the strategy of summarizing to gain meaning and knowledge from an informational text. Young readers highlight supporting details and main ideas, and then they use this to summarize two articles: "The Great Quake" and "What...

Tweet all about it! Junior journalists explore the Twittersphere to determine its effectiveness as a news broadcasting tool in the 12th installment of the 16-part Social Media Toolbox. Participants follow and record their observations of...

Study cause and effect in both literature and informational text with a lesson designed for several different reading levels. After kids review the concept of cause and effect, they read an article or story and note the causes and...

Are some families down to their last generation? The final segment of a two-part climate change series investigates the vanishing Marshall Islands. Scholars divide into research teams to analyze three different individuals whose lives...

By examining free trade, protectionism, and analyzing 19th and 21st century arguments for and against the tariff, students will be able to compare and contrast the 19th and 21st century. They will analyze text, answer discussion...