How many Girl Scout cookies can you fit in a trunk? Learners consider this question after watching a video of an SUV being filled to the top with single boxes of the cookies. They use measurements of the trunk and the box of cookies to...

What's missing from most studies of the American Revolutionary War is information about the role African Americans played in the conflict. To correct this oversight, middle schoolers research groups like the Black Loyalists and ...

Introduce young readers to informational texts with a well-designed, ready-to-use, and Common Core-aligned unit. Young readers learn a variety of skills while studying the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). As the first...

As part of a group of lessons, your class will return to the primary text for this unit, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Key vocabulary as well as close reading strategies continue to be the focus skills; however, this...

Your class continues to explore the history of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In addition to learning about the background of this text, learners work on the skill of identifying and understanding key academic vocabulary....

Here is a mid-unit assessment for a group of lessons studying the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The first half of this instructional activity calls for several forms of review. Your class will review the content of the...

Before continuing to read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, learners need to understand why and how this document was written. First, show and discuss a video from UNICEF to demonstrate the need for such a document. Then...

A continuation of the previous lesson, which is part of a larger group of lessons on human rights (see additional materials). Here, in Lesson 7, your class will explore more articles from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. After...

This writing pre-assessment has minimal instruction but maximum support and encouragement. It begins with a review of the book, Rain School, through a think-pair-share and small group discussion. The discussion...

The eighth lesson plan in this series continues the focus on vocabulary and increasing young readers' awareness of academic language. Pairs of learners participate in a short vocabulary review activity called Interactive Words in which...

Although this is part of a series, lesson plan nine has your class take a break from their close study of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) text to read the firsthand account “Teaching Nepalis to Read, Plant, and...

Lesson 10 in a series of human rights lessons focuses on the skills of finding evidence and summarizing. Your young readers work to compare the two texts they have read in this unit: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights...

The last instructional activity in this unit about human rights consists of a final assessment. To demonstrate the skills your class has acquired throughout this unit, they will work with a new article entitled "From Kosovo to the United...

Third graders continue to practice the close reading skills of capturing the gist and reading again for important details in the sixth lesson in a larger unit. This is a great beginning-of-the-year unit for establishing visible thinking...

As the final lesson plan in a larger beginning-of-the-year unit to establish routines and teach close reading skills, this plan is designed as an assessment piece. Using the story, The Librarian of Basra, learners independently...

Third graders practice the skills of identifying the main message in a story, describing the main character, and sorting the key details of a story into specific categories. The story they read is, The Boy Who Loved Words. Using a...

Here is a lesson plan that invites learners to engage in a kinesthetic activity that allows them to physically move and manipulate words in order to think about ways to understand vocabulary in context. After that activity is complete,...

Ease into informational text with the instructional activity suggested here. Part of a unit series, the instructional activity draws from previous lessons and acts as a natural moment to add in informational text. Class members read one...

Expose your class to Waiting for the Biblioburro, narrative nonfiction that will act as the bridge between ficiton and informational texts to come. Class members do a close reading of the text, looking at excerpts instead of the whole...

Encourage your young writers to thoughtfully plan and organize their work. First, model how this is done and vocalize your thought process as you work. Next, create a class list of strategies that they can use during independent writing...

Acquaint your class with informational text through a close reading. First, examine a couple of pages together, looking at text features and content. The whole class focuses on marking down a brief summary of each paragraph before...

Revision is an important part of the writing process. Focus on revising topic sentences and details with the plan described here. This is part of a unit, so pupils have already filled out a graphic organizer about traveling...

Supervise the final drafting of a well-organized paragraph by following the steps outlined in this plan. Using the included sample paragraph as a model, class members brainstorm criteria for quality work and then compose their paragraphs...

For the final step of the performance task for this unit, class members will create an illustration to go with the paragraph on their bookmark. After looking at models, guide pupils toward recognizing the criteria for an effective...