Promote critical thinking and literary analysis with a short activity. Readers of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart respond to a series of questions modeled on Bloom's Taxonomy.    

Readers respond to a series of questions focused onJuliet Marillier's young adult novel Wildwood Dancing, and crafted to reflect the levels in Bloom's Taxonomy.

Imagine drawing with zeros and ones. The third lesson in a unit of 15 introduces the class to creating black and white images. Pairs get together to create an encoding scheme in order to make these images. They move on to a...

That's Amazing! is the theme of an English language development unit created by Houghton Mifflin. Following a speak, look, move, and listen routine, scholars delve into topics; seasons, weather, animals, landforms, telling...

Practice descriptive writing with a prompt that includes a photograph. Writers craft the whole story of the single second caught in a photo using the provided questions to prompt their imaginations. 

To underscore the importance of being informed consumers, kids check out youth consumer magazines and websites and then create their own. Although no detailed plans are included in the resource, it is packed with ideas and suggestions.

How would you use census data from 1880-1900? Here are a set of ways you can incorporate the book Little House on the Prairie and US census data from that time period. Learners will research the validity or the book based on factual...

Glide into the study of flight. An engaging lesson has scholars research information on the Wright brothers. They develop props and produce a recreation of the first flight at Kitty Hawk. They then report on the event as if they were...

Listening to poems about feeling lonely and feeling like an outsider set the stage for a group activity that focuses on Stevie Smith's "Not Waving But Drowning." Groups examine the three stanzas of Smith's poem separately and identify in...

"Tone means attitude." Or so says this resource that uses Jordan Pruitt's "One Love" to model for songwriters how to develop an attitude in their lyrics. Class members engage in a number of exercises designed to give them direct and...

Research various types of bridge designs. Your class will be asked to consider what it would be like without bridges while learning about how they work. They will construct a model bridge based on given parameters. They then calculate...

Narrative or expository? That is the question readers face on a two-part comprehension worksheet that asks kids to read a short passage about these two different types of writing, and then to answer a series of comprehension questions...

S1 and S2 language learners practice the skills of predicting and scanning as they examine images and read the script of interviews with two young students.

Readers are asked to use the provided graphic organizer to list the main idea and supporting ideas in a passage about the inventions of Benjamin Franklin.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" serves as an exemplar for a mini-lesson on semicolons. Working alone or in small groups, class members first circle all the semicolons in the letter, and then consider how this...

Readers of Parrot in the Oven: Mi Vida place themselves in the story and craft a persuasive letter to a character in Victor Martinez's National Book Award-winning novel.

Close up your study of Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science with a letter-writing assignment. Pupils prepare by journaling and sharing with a partner. They then compose letters that focus on a big idea from the...

Imagine waking up to find a giant bug staring back at you in the mirror! Think about the plight of Franz Kafka's Gregor in The Metamorphosis with a group discussion activity. Class members reflect on what it would be...

Invite your pupils to create original Greek characters and myths for their characters to star in. Similar to a traditional Greek myth, the story must explain a natural phenomenon, depict a struggle between good and evil characters, and...

What does empathy look like? Encourage your pupils to put themselves in another person's shoes with several writing and discussion activities that relate to a featured short film. Over the course of the instructional activity,...

What makes your pupils happy? Find out with a lesson centered around this theme. Class members come up with things that make them happy and write about them in preparation for quick group project. Learners watch and discuss a short film...

Whether or not you are new to using The Odyssey with your classes, this publisher-produced teaching guide deserves a place in your curriculum library. The packet includes background information, chapter by-chapter summaries, study...

Learners read short paragraphs, summarize the passage in one sentence, and then develop an appropriate title that indicates the main idea of the selection. Part of a series of exercises designed to build literary skills.

Does your class or do individual learners need more practice determining the main idea of a passage of informational text? Here is a instructional activity containing seven exercises that asks kids to read short paragraphs, summarize the...