Great for a reading intervention or remedial Language Arts class, this instructional activity uses two stories from Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul III ("Terri Jackson" and "Mary Lou" to reinforce note-taking skills, story elements,...

Bring the fun and creativity of children's stories to your language arts class. Middle schoolers write, revise, and publish an original student book which incorporates the elements of a short story. They put their story in the form of a...

Readers practice character analysis by reviewing Gary Soto's short story "La Bamba" with the whole class (anything you've read together will work). They design t-shirts that feature traits and story elements to reveal the nature of a...

Elementary readers in literature groups practice summarizing chapter-by-chapter with Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach. Focus on main idea, supporting details, and the 5 Ws. Unfortunately, a clever "peach" graphic organizer to which...

Encourage your class to discuss their childhood with other classmates using the six questions listed here. After sharing their answers, learners write a paragraph detailing general information about their childhood. This plan is designed...

Do your young readers know that poems can be performed as a team? They listen to a few examples from Paul Fleischman's book Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices, paying attention to how the how readers work together....

Learners explore the concept of alliteration. In this sound devices lesson, students use educational software to create alliterative phrases that are accompanied by appropriate clip art, design tools, and graphics.

In this Silver Blaze and Other Stories reading and study guide worksheet, learners respond to 8 multi-step short answer, multiple choice, and graphic organizer questions. The questions are designed to be answered before, while, and after...

Originally designed to be used along with a text that is not included, this plan contains a graphic organizer and word guessing game to help readers use decoding strategies to gain new vocabulary. A set of questions relating to community...

Your readers explore plot patterns in mysteries by identifying problems first in Two-Minute Mysteries by Donald J. Sobol and then in  The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin. To gain access to the worksheets, graphic organizers and...

Turn your readers into "examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators," with a KWHL strategy designed for Fahrenheit 451. Individuals fill out a KWHL graphic organizer about censorship and then share responses with a group. The...

Here is a lesson designed for middle schoolers which helps them recognize stereotypes one way or another against a particular group of people. They also determine what may have motivated the author to use a stereotype in the first place....

Model for your class members how to use a definition map to make connections between new words and prior knowledge. Although the strategy is designed for social studies classes, the approach can be use at any grade level and in any...

Chapter II of John Milton's Paradise Lost provides the text for a series of comprehension questions crafted using Bloom's Taxonomy.

Making predictions is an excellent reading strategy. Work on building this into your pupils' toolkit of strategies by trying out the process outlined here for reading the very beginning of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. The...

How can an unfamiliar place help you learn something about yourself? Use a narrative writing prompt as you culminate your unit on Jane Yolen's The Devil's Arithmetic. Kids consider the ways that, like the main character from the...

Thinking of assigning a research paper? Get writers off on the right foot with a instructional activity that introduces the BEAM research model. Writers brainstorm the background of their topic, explicate the aspects of their topic,...

Emotional appeal or argument? That is the question. An informative instructional activity helps your class recognize the difference between a logical argument and an emotional appeal and learn how to craft an argumentative response....

Class members use the Investigative Reporting Article Planner they completed the first day of the unit to guide the development of an infographic that displays what they have learned about the topic they researched. 

Learners investigate recycling by creating receptacles that can hold trash or recyclable items.  In this graphic design instructional activity, students encourage their classmates to help save the environment by using a recycling...

Students explore technology by creating a web page on-line. In this digital arts lesson, students identify the structure needed to create a website as well as the content required to keep visitors entertained. Students collaborate in...

Students explore computer science by participating in mini activities. In this graphic design lesson, identify the different components on a personal computer and define their purpose. Students utilize Microsoft Paint to create a digital...

Students design a shopping bag that will allow the consumer to immediately identify the store and understand the product that is being sold. They create an advertisement for a new shopping bag. Students choose their type of business to...

Students evaluate Web design. In this journalism lesson, students examine the attributes of selected Web sites and then design their own online newspaper by using the principles of design they discuss in this lesson.