Lewis and Clark took note of the animals common to their home state. As they traveled, they noticed that different places had different types of animals. Your class will use this model to compare and contrast elements that make up their...

Cozy up and listen to a recording of The True Story of the Three Little Pigs and The Three Little Javelinas. Then, lead your class in a compare and contrast of the two stories by creating a Venn diagram.

Are you a good egg? Learners begin a farm-to-table lesson by acting out verbs in groups to demonstrate the egg production process, and then research the steps using online resources. Several excellent videos are linked through the...

Investigate biographies with your class. Compare autobiographies and biographies of Martin Luther King, Jr. as an example. Learners explore the factual components that make up a biography and locate several biographies of notable...

Get your class up and moving as they explore how to express movement and dance through words. Designed around two poems by Lillian Morrison about break dancing, the activity truly captures the creative and multi-sensory aspects of...

Middle and high schoolers hone their writing skills by reading Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and the poem Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout Would Not Take the Garbage Out. They fill out a graphic organizer (included here), and use the organizer to write an...

Fourth graders read cards about the explorers: Coronado, Lewis, and Clark, Pike, and Long. In this influential expeditions lesson, 4th graders describe and observe explorers who came to Kansas. Students locate main reasons and details as...

Historical accounts of various events have proven to differ depending on the point of view of the person documenting the event. Learners read and analyze two first person accounts of acts of slave resistance seen at a southern...

Readers learn how to summarize scientific text and evaluate the advantages, disadvantages, and challenges in writing summaries. They select science-related articles you've pulled and collected from the New York Times and, with a partner,...

Agriculture surrounds us every day; incorporate measuring tools into a study of Oklahoma's agricultural industry! Small groups read an informational text (included) before visiting stations where they investigate prices of various...

Young readers compare and contrast digital and print versions of tall tale text. The resource includes a character analysis in which pupils compare and contrast traits, and make inferences about what the characters do and say. They...

Here is a lesson that provides scholars with two opportunities to stretch their compare-and-contrast muscles. First, learners compare and contrast their experience reading the fourth stanza of If by Rudyard Kipling to listening to the...

Young historians compare the presentation of medical care during the Civil War in passages from fictional and nonfictional texts. They examine passages from Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell and Soldier's...

Teenagers face many temptations, and just saying "No!" can be very difficult. Here's a lesson that provides some help. Learners use a Venn diagram to compare and contrast excerpts from The Odyssey, Tennyson's "The Lotus-Eaters," and the...

What do a colt and a boy in a tree have in common? More than might be first apparent. The fourth interactive in a series of ten introduces readers to intertextuality, the process of using abstract thinking to consider how one text...

Can animals sense an earthquake before the ground starts to shake? Read two short passages that feature stories about animals that acted strangely just before an earthquake. Learners then answer a few reading comprehension questions...

It's time to put it all together! Using the resource, scholars complete an end-of-unit assessment. They write a multi-paragraph essay comparing Audre Lorde's "From the House of Yemanjá" or "An Address by Elizabeth Cady Stanton" to...

Find the main idea in an informational text with a versatile lesson. Three levels of differentiation help you implement the strategy in any age or class level, based on the ability and objectives of your learners.

Even though two passages discuss the same topic, they contain different facts and details. Scholars analyze two reading passages about the Gettysburg Address and list the ways they are the same and different.

Sometimes, the movie version of a book can provide additional details about the source material, particularly when the film is thoughtfully directed and well-acted. Ninth graders watch a two-minute clip from the movie Temple Grandin and...

Did you the message? Scholars listen to a read aloud of The Wings of the Butterfly to summarize and determine the message of the text. They discuss the folktale and vocabulary in groups, then use a double bubble map to compare the story...

Words matter! That's the big idea behind an activity that asks scholars to replace words in FDR's "Day of Infamy" speech with synonyms. They then listen to a recording of President Roosevelt's address and compare his version to their own.

After reading The Mitten by Jan Brett, scholars discuss the author's purpose. Small groups compare and contrast a book written to entertain and a book to inform, then create a T-Chart detailing the characteristics of...

As part of a unit study of Bud, Not Buddy, readers compare Buddy's list of rules to live by with those that Steve Jobs enumerates in his commencement address to Stanford's 2005 graduating class.