With the emphasis on incorporating more nonfiction in language arts classes the question arises about how to design activities that motivate kids to engage with informational text. How about an assignment that asks class members to...

America has a long history of presidents with an affinity for the truth, from Honest Abe to George Washington and his cherry tree. A short passage features Washington's infamous hatchet and confession, and includes four comprehension...

Teenagers get the real information about marijuana use based on the history of tobacco legislation and research. As they read an educational passage about marijuana laws, science, and changing attitudes, they address their preconceptions...

Readers of Neal Shusterman's young adult science fiction novel, Unwind, record what they know, what they want to know, how the will find answers to the questions, on a KWHL chart.

The Fantastic Voyage is becoming close to reality. The class reads an article on the use of nanotechnology in the medical field and participate in a discussion about what they read. The discussion method helps class members become more...

Learn all about where ground water is stored, how it moves, and how it is accessed in a detailed and thorough 10-page reading. Whether supplementing reading for an existing environmental or earth science course or providing background...

What is it that makes people keep going when they face challenges in life? Ask your class to consider this question in relation to their own experiences and as they read material from The New York Times. Using personal experiences...

How can you tell if someone is happy? The lesson works with elementary and middle school scholars to activate their schema and pay attention to details to make inferences in their daily lives, poetry, and other literature. Cleverly...

Here is a lesson plan in which pupils connect themes and rules to live by from the story Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis to those found in the poem If by Rudyard Kipling. First, scholars discuss their reading and review Bud's...

Practice reading sight words with a St. Patrick's Day activity! Early readers identify words and letters and follow the coloring key to create two colorful portraits of a dancing leprechaun.

Excellence, ethics, and engagement are the three E's featured in a unit that promotes good work among elementary scholars. Through discussion, reflection, read-alouds, activity worksheets, and written responses, participants gain...

Having prepared for an analysis essay about one of the characters from The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, tenth graders demonstrate their understanding in a mid-unit assessment. They focus on either Jing-Mei or Waverly in an informative...

Delve into a Bengali folktale with a series of reading comprehension activities. Before kids read The Ghost Catcher, they discuss the concept of reflections and mirrors. They then answer comprehension questions about the characters and...

As part of a study of Juliet Marillier's Wildwood Dancing, class members create a KWHL chart listing what they know, what the want to know, how they will find information, and what they have learned about prejudice.

If you need an array of worksheets to augment your science lessons, peruse a collection of assignments that is sure to fit your needs. With topics such as metric conversion, the scientific method, textbook features, research skills,...

How does or society punish people who break the law? What effect does guilt have on a person's life? In what way does or society demand we conform to certain conventions? Such questions, found in this study guide, are sure to...

A two-part lesson features Civil Rights hero, Ruby Bridges. Part one focuses on the heroic actions of Ruby Bridges then challenges scholars to complete a Venn diagram in order to compare themselves to her. Part two begins with a...

Photos can capture a complete story in a single image. Class members closely examine a photo of a homeless camp and attempt to read the story told by the picture. They then read the caption for the photograph and compare their notes with...

Pay attention! A instructional activity featuring Ada Limon's poem "Dead Stars" is designed to help learners develop their noticing skills. Class members first study the constellation Orion's image and list what they notice and how the...

Powerful women need not look like Wonder Woman. After writing a paragraph about a strong woman they know, young scholars examine images of Alice Paul and then do a close reading of Katharine Rolston Fisher's poem "Alice Paul." Finally,...

Finding the central idea in a text is equally important in fiction and nonfiction. Work on analyzing a piece of writing for the central idea with Karen Russell's "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves," complete with supporting...

Wrap up your literary analysis unit with a discussion activity as tenth graders prepare for an end-of-unit assessment. After they have read and annotated Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepard to His Love," Sir Walter Raleigh's...

If you've ever wished you could respond to an author's message, an instructional activity that connects three poems with the same concept will appeal to you. Based on the first few lessons' focus on Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate...

Relationships between characters generate energy that propels the plot and connects events with a central idea. Track character development and meaningful relationships with a literary analysis lesson focused on H.G. Bissinger's Friday...