Students complete a simulated book order form for their class. In this book club lesson, students budget and plan an order form for their fellow students, discussing why they chose specific books.

A great way to bring poetry and parody into your language arts classroom, this lesson mimics famous poems based on Jon Scieszka's Science Verse. The activity not only allows the class to see examples of poem parodies, but to create their...

Students research the English Renaissance era. For this research lesson, students complete this activity before reading the story The Prince and the Pauper to learn about the history. They pick topics and work in groups to research...

Add many seconds of beauty to your class with a short film and related project. The resource centers around a competition based on one-second segments of film, and the final compilation that came from the contest. Pupils identify...

The ultimate legacy of Emmett Till's violent death is its role in the non-violent roots of the Civil Rights Movement. A lesson compares contemporaneous articles with the lyrics of Bob Dylan's "The Death of Emmett Till" and prompts...

This packet, the second in the series of support materials for the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt thematic units on amazing animals, contains exercises and activities designed for the ESL/ELD classroom.

In a close reading of "The Overseer" chapter from Sugar Changed the World, groups focus on the words Aronson and Budhos use to contrast the lifestyles of enslaved people and their enslavers. The whole class then engages in an...

Pupils examine the use of adjectives and descriptive phrases to improve their written pieces. In this adjectives and descriptive phrases lesson, students look at demonstrative adjectives, common adjectives, and proper adjectives. They...

Pupils use descriptive language to invent and describe a bug. For this descriptive language lesson, students watch a video about bugs and review the names of insects. Pupils complete a worksheet about insects and then describe an insect...

Students write a good title and edit their essay.  In this writing lesson, students examine several examples of good titles and discuss what makes them effective.  Students relate this to the sign on a building and discuss ways...

Poetry Soup, a reading and writing unit constructed by the Petrified Forest National Park, will have scholars hungry to learn about nature. The cross-content unit contains topics related to history, science, and language arts. Content...

First graders through a variety of strategies assess how to write in journals openly and effectively. Those strategies include integration of technology, story telling, group and team work, performance-based assessment/rubrics, visual...

Fifth graders explore mystery stories.  In this reading and writing lesson, 5th graders complete a planning guide for an original mystery.  Students use the writing process to create a mystery story. 

Students create friendly letters and surveys to other schools. In this letter writing activity, students format friendly letters to other school and request a reply. Students chart the replies on a map and share information from the...

Students practice their writing skills. In this writing revision lesson, students read the provided writing samples and make corrections to the sentence fragments that are evident in each of them.

Students learn characteristics of an effective personal narrative.  In this personal narrative lesson plan, students discover ways to show rather than tell, adding richness and detail to their writing.  Students evaluate a news...

Students explore cattle drives. In this United States history and letter writing lesson, students write a letter to their family predicting possible problems that were encountered by participants in cattle drives. Students design brands,...

Carve out some time for your youngsters to write in their journal. Today, they write a story about pets. They learn the value of a journal and how to keep up with it, and they enhance story development by planning their story before...

A thorough lesson plan takes your first grade class through Jane Yolen's beautiful Owl Moon. It crafts the unit with clear objectives, high-level guiding questions, cloze activities and sentence frames, and extension...

It's no myth: this packet on Greek mythology is an excellent addition to your social studies curriculum. With writing activities, such as short answer responses and biopoems, and reading activities, which include creation stories and...

Poetry or prose? That is the question facing middle schoolers as they begin a month-long poetry unit by examining the characteristics that differentiate poetry and prose writing. Pupils learn about poetic devices and different types of...

Students discover the importance of using descriptive words in good writing. They brainstorm words to describe elephants and dogs then watch a video that describes different items. Each student writes a paragraph using descriptive words...

Students practice experiencing writing with appropriate language and incorporating the eight parts of speech. They assess that many words have multiple functions when used in different contexts. Each student free writes in response to a...

Students participate in Writing with Writer's, a step-by-step set of directions aimed at improving different genres of student writing. They identify the characteristics of different genres and follow a specified writing process to...