Learn about the government's role in everyday life in a guided reading activity. Groups create a KWL chart concerning the government's impact on the community.

Set a purpose for reading informational texts with this reading lesson. To find the central idea of a text, young readers turn titles and subtitles into questions to help them understand the text. They complete a T-chart for the lesson,...

It is difficult to articulate how growing up feels as accurately and beautifully as Sandra Cisneros does in her short story "Eleven." After seventh graders read the story and note the author's use of figurative language, they respond to...

Take your class of youngsters on a prehistoric adventure with this four-lesson series on dinosaurs. Accompanying the Meet the Dinosaurs books by Don Lessem, these lessons engage children in writing their own dinosaur books,...

Middle schoolers read and review informational texts, analyze cause and effect, and distinguish fact from opinion. They assess a "one-minute mystery" you read aloud for cause and effect relationships. Resource includes complete set of...

Six lessons make up a unit all about biographies. Scholars read about a remarkable life while taking notes and identifying characteristics of the biographical genre. Readers examine the tale's obstacles, accomplishments, and sequence of...

What's the difference between summarizing and paraphrasing? Show class members how to find the main ideas from informational text and condense it, restate it, or quote it directly with a series of educational activities based...

Explore animal habitats and reinforce speaking, listening, reading comprehension, and writing skills with a unit that focuses on the Arctic, desert, ocean, prairie, and rainforest. Enthusiastic scientists read informational text to...

Investigate current local elections across the United States with this New York Times reading lesson. Using informational text, middle and high schoolers research local elections and create their own news reports about what they...

How do you grow a goal from a dream to reality? You make a plan! After reading chapters two and three of Where the Red Fern Grows, learners map how Billy earns his dogs by completing an organizer in pairs and then discussing answers in...

Twenty insightful questions follow a read aloud of the story, Amos and Boris by William Steig. Scholars then show what they know through completion of a cause and effect chart, reading fluency assessment, and a written...

What is and what will be the role of newspapers in the future? Keeping this essential question in mind, class members use print, electronic, and/or web editions of newspapers, to investigate topics that include financial...

Explore soil, genetic traits, natural resources, and pollution in a series of lessons that focus on biodiversity. Kids complete experiments to learn more about the importance of varied genes and organisms in an ecosystem.

Critical thinking and social justice are central themes for this resource on bias and crime in media. The class views and discusses an incisive PSA that highlights assumptions based on race. Small groups read newspaper opinion pieces...

Learn about the animals of Australia with a language arts lesson about an Australian folktale called, Why Koala Has a Stumpy Tail. After reading the story as a class, kids discuss events and characters from the book, retell the...

Plagiarism, copyright, and fair use are the focus of a three-part instructional activity designed to inform scholars of how to properly cite others' work. First, pupils use a KWL chart to begin thinking and...

Emergencies happen. Be prepared the next time you have to call in a substitute with a lesson plan designed to meet the needs of a kindergarten class. Throughout the day, class members work with number and alphabet cards, identify numbers...

Always be prepared for a substitute teacher with a daily plan equipped with an assortment of activities that cover third grade math, reading, word work, and writing. 

A lesson in personal finance can be the most valuable part of a high school education. Connect the basics of banking with informational reading skills in a lesson that prompts teenagers to answer a series of questions based on...

Using the Jigsaw protocol, scholars study chunks of text from a speech given by former US presidents following a devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti. As they read the speech in small groups, they build background knowledge and share...

Sixth graders investigate local water. In this water cycle lesson, 6th graders take samples from surrounding water sources. Students record data from the samples, compare and graph the results.

Your 9th - 12th graders can hone their analysis and critical thinking skills by studying the way a subject is portrayed across media types. They examine how various print, visual, and online sources have portrayed key players in the 9/11...

Explore ocean habitats with a lesson that showcases the home of manatees and loggerhead turtles in Belize. Here, pupils compare and contrast the homes of ocean animals to those of humans, listen to an original short story about...