The Sugar Changed the World chapter, "The Sound of Liberty," highlights how the differing attitudes toward the slave trade shifted the issue from an economic concern to a concern for human rights. The passage contrasts Thomas Jefferson's...

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...

Students observe and demonstrate the process of summarizing text. They read and discuss the steps to summarize text, then in small groups read and summarize an article about frogs from "National Geographic" online. Independently they...

Read, revisit, and reflect. Older elementary young scholars summarize main idea 6using key details. They consider the V formation that birds fly in, summarize an informational text, and write critical thinking questions.

Pupils review the main points of note-taking to summarize the content of a formal or informal spoken presentation. They hear a guest speaker talk about a pre-arranged topic and take notes during the presentation. Next, they write a...

Help your high schoolers identify the main idea of a passage with this instructional activity on paraphrasing. First rewriting a paragraph in their own words, they then underline the most important words in their paraphrase and use them...

Intended to be used along with the first chapter of An Introduction to Language textbook, this PowerPoint is full of linguistic terminology that is not necessarily explained. This tool can be used to complement a lecture or a text, but...

As scholars begin reading more difficult text, they need to acquire an arsenal of comprehension strategies. Here are few helpful ones to guide new readers through the informational text About Trees, which is linked here for...

Newspapers aren't only for reading—they're for learning skills, too! A journalism unit provides three lessons each for primary, intermediate, and secondary grades. Lessons include objectives, materials, vocabulary, and procedure, and...

Students give their book reports as oral "Meet the Press" type interviews. They team up with another student "reporter" and answer questions about main idea, details, and the point of view.

Students analyze Maine's Declaration of Rights. They review state constitutions and declaration of rights and their importance. They analyze a section of Maine's Declaration of Rights and crete their own declarations of rights. They...

It's all about the details. Scholars examine how specific details contribute to a central idea in an excerpt from The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Learners discuss the details in pairs, share with the group, and respond to guided...

Encoding What I did Last Summer. Class members develop a way to encode a personal experience using a top-down approach to determine components and sub-components of their experience They then pick one portion of the experience and go...

Eleventh graders engage in the reading of the novel "The Scarlet Letter" while choosing a topic to write a literature response. They search the novel for textual evidence to include in writing a paper that supports a well thought...

Many and many a year ago Edgar Allan Poe crafted the chilling tale of "Annabel Lee." The poem is the perfect vehicle to introduce Poe's concept of unity of effect, the idea that every element in a poem or story should help to develop a...

Set up your class to read Esperanza Rising, by Pam Munoz Ryan, through a class read-aloud and exploration of the setting. The detailed lesson plan outlines each step. First, class members read over the first few pages and focus on the...

Encourage your young citizens to make a difference. Using Tyson Miller's Dream of a Nation: Inspiring Ideas for a Better America as a starting point, class members watch documentaries, investigate issues, and then write letters to...

Trading in Colonial America is the focus of a lesson plan that boosts reading skills. As a class, scholars examine the informational text for crucial details, use their newfound knowledge to share information with their peers, and write...

Get started with The Cay. First, provide some background information and images that relate to the novel. Then pupils can create double-entry journals. Once that is complete, read the first two chapters, encouraging individuals to record...

Young historians climb through the three branches of the US government in the third lesson of this five-part series. While reading the first three Articles of the Constitution in small groups, children write facts on paper leaves...

Walking in nature is the theme of a unit designed to support English language development lessons. Scholars look, write, speak, and move to explore topics such as camping, woodland animals, instruments,...

Searching for a detailed lesson to assist in describing rotations while keeping the class attentive? Individuals manipulate rotations in this application-based lesson depending on each parameter. They construct models depending on the...

Acting as journalists on a team to determine the most influential city-state of Renaissance Italy, your young historians will research, discuss, and compare the rise of Venice, Florence, and Genoa, and their influence in shaping a...

To conclude a study of One Hundred Years of Solitude, class members analyze Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Nobel Prize in Literature acceptance speech. After a whole-class discussion of the main ideas in the speech, individuals draft a...