I like to make enough class books throughout the year so that at the end of the school year, each child gets one book to keep. Here are a few easy ones. For every field trip we take, we make a class book.

What is is about cereal boxes that draws consumers in? Tap into the effective marketing of cereal boxes and apply those elements to a book report. Pupils cover cereal boxes with information about their chosen books. they must create a...

Ensure that your kids don't even consider saying "Not me!" when it comes time to read by engaging them in this set of lesson plans based around "The Little Red Hen." The class reads the story together before starting in on additional...

Create a picture dictionary for one of William Shakespeare's most famous plays. After readers finish The Tempest, they assign each letter of the alphabet to a concept or character, and add a description and evidence from...

What's your favorite seasonal tradition? Before viewing a stage production of A Charlie Brown Christmas, language arts students explore the music and literary themes of the story. After they have watched the show, learners compare...

Breath life into the pages of a text with this instructional video on creating pop-up books. From choosing a topic, through the planning and creation phases, this video examines how to develop engaging visual...

This review of a novel project is a great way to ensure accountability for independent reading. The assignment sheet, templates, samples, and rubrics are all part of the packet materials.

Keeping readers focused during literature discussion circles can sometimes be a challenge. Check out this worksheet that ensures accountability by establishing six very specific, very different roles for group members: facilitator,...

Budding poets compose an original free verse poem. Encouraged to use personification and alliteration, scholars read over three tips and examples then try their hand at drafting a poem of their own style.  

If you give your teacher a book, she'll probably want an activity guide to go with it. Have fun learning with a wonderful selection of hands on activities created for the book, If You Take a Mouse to School. Each activity focuses on...

Young readers travel back to the time of the dinosaurs in this literature unit based on the story Dinosaurs Before Dark. Intended for use with upper-elementary special education young scholars, this resource provides reading...

An activity booklet includes a timeline of the movement, a song, and various informational reading passages on leaders, events, and the Civil Rights Memorial in Washington DC. Reading response questions and word puzzles are sure to...

Can you create a poem without writing a word! With found poetry, you can! Practice one version of found poetry with a lesson on book spine poems. Learners create poems by stacking books and reading the lines created by their spine titles.

Make a study of Charles M. Scultz's famous comic strip Peanuts in your language arts class. Class members read and discuss the baseball-themed book POW! A Peanuts Collection. After talking about themes and vocabulary, they complete...

What fun! To illustrate the concept of appeasement, class members use Napoleon's exploits as the basis of their own illustrated children's book modeled after Laura Numeroff's circular tale, If You Give a Mouse A Cookie. What fun!

Get the scoop with a fun, engaging newspaper project. After analyzing the parts of a newspaper, including the headline, subtitles, and pictures or images, young journalists get to work by writing their own stories in a newspaper article...

A reading of Dr. Seuss's My Many Colored Days provides a great intro for a discussion of colors and how they can represent emotions and moods. Kids share the feelings they associate with various colors

Kids create their own hooting owls using the template provided and art supplies. Pair the activity with the book, 10 Hooting Owls as suggested here, or on its own as part of a unit on owls or nocturnal animals. 

Invite your pupils to express their understanding of a novel through a collaborative video project. Groups choose a novel from those you have studied in class, select four scenes, storyboard the scenes, film the scenes, edit the film,...

Introduce your class to basic salutations in Spanish and English with a group of activities and exercises. The materials, which can be put together as a packet, include coloring pages, a matching activity, a fill-in-the-blank exercise,...

Direct readers' thinking with a DRTA activity that asks them to make predictions about The Book Thief based on an examination of the cover of Markus Zusak's novel and a reading of the prologue.

Help young readers find, identify, and use their voices with a set of empowering activities based on Peter H. Reynolds' trilogy of books. Sky Color, Ish, and The Dot focus on recognizing moods and treating each other...

It's not easy to measure the weather. Pupils learn about what all weather has in common—the atmosphere. Scholars discover how a meteorologists must be able to measure aspects of the atmosphere and decipher the data. They then create a...

To gain insight into the many different types of habitats, individuals must first get to know their own. Here, scholars explore their school environment, draw a map, compare and contrast their surroundings to larger ones. They then...