Augment your unit on Carl Hiaasen's Hoot with a series of activities about the environment, civil disobedience, making an impact in the world, and growing up. A list of literary concepts and themes helps you to write your lessons to...

A silent discussion? Indeed. Readers engage in a silent conversation about Victor Martinez's award-winning novel by recording questions, insights, and comments on the board.

Assign this narrative essay after finishing Puddn'head Wilson. Learners write about their own experiences with overcoming obstacles. A five-step process is laid out on this assignment page.

Have you ever wanted to tell a character what you really thought of him or her? Use a lesson based on Kyoko Mori's Shizuko's Daughter to encourage learners to write a letter in response to a character's actions. 

Sophia's War, Avi's novel that tracks the adventures of Sophia Calderwood, a fictional character, as well as the true stories of British Major John Andre and General Benedict Arnold during the American Revolution, is the anchor...

The accuracy required by the design and measurement of an Olympic running track will surprise track stars and couch potatoes alike. Given a short introduction, the class then scaffolds into a detailed analysis of the exact nature of the...

Discover activities to help learners increase self-awareness, build peer and family relations, and develop positive self-esteem. Here you'll find six suggestions for instilling a sense of confidence and self awareness in youngsters. Each...

Invite your pupils to discover their strengths with a multiple intelligences assessment. They read through several pages of activities and check off the items that apply. Learners then tally up their scores to determine which of the...

Collecting the data required to adequately assess school programs can be an overwhelming task. Simplify the process with a three-page worksheet that identifies the indicators for student achievement results, engagement data, discipline...

Ask learners to focus on one scene in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in order to write an analytical essay about Twain's ideas surrounding childhood. The final assignment in a unit, this writing prompt requires learners...

Sometimes it's helpful to read certain passages in a novel slowly and carefully, and to read other parts more quickly to move the plot along. Learners tread carefully through Chapter 20 of Lois Lowry's The Giver, noting which...

The biopoem is a great way for instructors to get to know class members, classmates to get to know each other, and readers to flesh out their understanding of a character. Why not create a biopoem for a character from Oedipus the...

Learning proper grammar rules for a middle school student can be difficult, especially in a texting world, but this resource demonstrates how the verb changes by adding a gerund or infinitive. Keep up the texting, but use this to...

Designed for teachers, this 12-page packet uses passages from Guy de Maupassant's "The Necklace" to model how to design activities that encourage close reading of complex text.

Using context clues is an important skill when mastering reading comprehension. A cloze activity prompts learners to read each sentence in a short passage and fill in the blanks, based on what the rest of the sentence says.

How can you tell what is going to happen next in a story? Learn to make predictions with five sections of stories. Kids read the beginning, and then write what they believe will happen next. Additionally, they provide evidence for their...

Show young readers how to use evidence from the text in an activity about making predictions. After reading five short passages, kids note what they think will happen next based on what they have read, and include the evidence that...

What happens next? Learn to make predictions with five short passages. As kids finish reading each passage, they jot down what they think will happen next, as well as the evidence from the text that supports their prediction.

Work with wonderful words within a well-written worksheet! Kids match alliterative verbs to fifteen names in order to get alliterative phrases.  

Soccer stars and fans alike will enjoy a fun cloze activity about Sarah the soccer player. Using the word bank below, kids find places in the reading passage to place the words most appropriately.

The topic of trigonometric ratios is often covered with loads of rote memorization baked into the activity. This activity set, however, leans more on using similar triangles and discovery learning to help young geometers develop a deeper...

Young historians discover the early people of the western hemisphere. The unit explores how the land changed, how it was used and homes of early Americans such as Incas, Mayans, Inuits, Aztecs, and Pueblos. Individuals also examine these...

Emerging nutritionists explore what it means to be healthy. In the beginning of the unit, your class will examine the five food groups and learn how food gets from the farm to our plates. This leads into the investigation of...

Caps for sale! Get your class into some monkey business with a fun set of activities based on Esphyr Slobodkina's Caps for Sale. Pupils practice tracing lines between caps and monkeys, identify colors of caps,...