Review where quotation marks belong and what they are used to indicate. From direct speech to in-text citations, young writers will find this instructional activity quite useful. Several exercises at the bottom, along with a key, give...

Finding and/or designing a menu of equally weighted synthesizing projects to end a unit can be a challenge. Simplify the task with this menu of individual and group projects meant to accompany a study of The Crucible. Presentations,...

Twelfth graders use computers and the Internet to research a specified area, word processors to prepare an essay, a digital camera, a video camera gather visuals, and a scanner to add visuals to a PowerPoint presentation as they discover...

Students research the culture of Mexico. In this Mexican culture lesson, students view a PowerPoint presentation about the culture of Mexico and the students take notes. Students write an essay about what they have learned.

Understanding a word's etymology can really help with decoding and building vocabulary skills. Readers compare and contrast words of similar origins but with different difficulty levels. They focus on prefixes, suffixes, and affixes....

You can cover literary elements, writing organization, and proofreading skills in this SMART board lesson. Using student paragraphs from a previous assignment, the class reviews the best examples of writing. A SMART board activity guides...

Introduce your class to the writing of the indigenous Americans and, even more well known, their story telling. An engaging presentation describes what kinds of texts would be included in the oral stories performed and some common...

Accept or except? Advice or advise? Eminent or imminent? Which is which witch? In order to select the correct word to complete 20 sentences, learners get out their dictionaries and check the meaning and usage of the commonly confused pairs.

Students work through a Haiku Organizer to determine the characteristics they use to write eight haiku poems on a theme that they choose. They design presentation folders of their completed work.

What do we use to determine the exact locations on the earth? Your kids can learn all about compass roses and latitude and longitude. Test understanding with the five reading comprehension questions included on the page.

A delightful lesson on poetry is here for you and your middle schoolers. Learners are instructed to write a Halloween poem. They get to choose the age range for the audience of the poem. So, it may be scary (for older kids), or humorous...

The stated goal of this unit is to use poetry to "improve the emotional health of young people." Budding poets read and then supply their own lines for poems that deal with alienation, loneliness, and rejection.

On every July 4th, we watch fireworks and celebrate our independence, but how is the history of the American Revolution preserved? Four social studies lesson guide learners through different memorials, commemorative objects, and restored...

How affected is Thinks Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe's personal biography? Using a four corners strategy, and evidence from their readings, class members debate the degree of biographical influence in Achebe's novel.

Here's a fresh twist on a comprehension quiz. Readers of The Great Gatsby use their answers to questions about the story to complete a crossword puzzle.

Nothing about William Golding's Lord of the Flies is straightforward, but you can map out the characters and key details in a helpful crossword puzzle. Twenty-seven clues review the book in an engaging and fun way.

Readers of Antigone are asked to recall events in Sophocles' tragedy to complete a 24-clue crossword puzzle. An engaging way to review for a final assessment.

A crossword puzzle based on Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man provides readers with an opportunity to test their knowledge of the novel's events.

Review main characters, story events, and important quotes from Marcus Zusak's The Book Thief. A crossword puzzle with 29 clues gives high schoolers the opportunity to check their understanding and revist Zusak's haunting work.

Good questions can help focus readers' attention on the elements writers use to add depth to their stories. The questions on this worksheet do just that and encourage readers to think critically about a story and author's purpose.

Sad, depressed, miserable, inconsolable, forlorn: so many synonyms have a lot of variety with their connotations. Through the guided imagery activity, writers explore the use of connotation and its influence on imagery and description by...

Close your eyes and picture a time where you decided to tell the truth to someone. What were you wearing? How did you feel? Such prompts begin a guided imagery activity for Zach's Lie. Directions for creating an environment conducive to...

At over 450 pages, John Steinbeck's Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Grapes of Wrath can be a challenging choice for full-class, book circle, or independent reading. The activities in a 10-page sample The Grapes of Wrath...

Plastic math? Have young learners count and name the number of plastic items in their centers. Kindergartners match sight word cards to the number of plastics in a given group, while learning that plastics come in all different shapes,...