Dr. Seuss and Walter Dean Myers team up to cover the topic of prejudice. Using The Sneeches (about the culture clash between star-bellied and bare-bellied Sneetches) and The Glory Fields (about a boy coming to America on a slave ship),...

Examine how climate and landforms affect plants and animals that live in particular areas. Discover that these same factors affect peoples' homes, jobs, and recreational activities. Pupils research ecosystems and biomes, and then write...

Explore reading comprehension and child safety in this young adult literacy instructional activity. High schoolers practice using context clues to figure out word meanings after observing a teacher model this process. They read an...

Introduce the background of design and designers and their role in communicating their thoughts to others. In groups, you can assign participation in a writing cluster on various designers and write paragraphs to submit to magazines. To...

Read to write! The class lists sensory details based on the plot of a story they have recently read. They create a drawing of a bracelet and use the bracelet's jewels or charms to list sensory details included in the story. They then use...

Get even your most reluctant pupils reading, writing, reciting, and maybe even enjoying poetry! A four day lesson, young writers learn about Golden Shovel poems: a poem format that uses borrowed words from other poems as the last words...

Read and discuss a variety of books by different authors and have your class create their own book. They will identify the different parts of a book, then using a story they have already written, they enter their story and information...

The book Fortunately provides an excellent opportunity to discuss prefixes and suffixes as they appear in context. The class goes over a list of prefixes and suffixes with the teacher. They then write two sentences; the first...

Join Franklin the turtle at school as youngsters learn new vocabulary in the context of Paulette Bourgeois' story (or apply this strategy to any book). Scholars are acquainted with new words before reading and raise hands when...

Pair the famous poems "I Hear America Singing," by Walt Whitman, and "I, Too, Sing America," by Langston Hughes, with a more recent poem by Elizabeth Alexander called "Praise Song for the Day" to demonstrate a theme and introduce your...

Get your kinesthetic learners engaged in a vocabulary study using Karen Pandell's book, Animal Action ABC. They move around as you read, and raise their hands whenever they hear one of the words you are learning. Pre-teach the...

Have your scholars ever known someone who was a copycat? Approach this issue as you study vocabulary in context by reading Peggy Rathmann's book Ruby the Copycat. Proposed focus words are: recite, murmur,...

How does Mars move both eastward and westward in Earth's sky? A simple interactive describes the concept of retrograde motion using both color and graphic models. Learners understand that the speed of the orbit accounts for Mars' change...

Understanding different verb tenses begins with knowing how to decode words. A instructional activity on the -ed suffix with unchanging base words introduces readers to the past tense. Teachers present the skill with oral reading and...

Seventh graders get the option of choosing their own text from a selection to read and gather more information as part of their research. Learners discuss the difference in reading for research and reading for pleasure. They also begin...

Historical fiction can be a valuable asset when learning about the past. Integrate several novels written about the Civil War into your social studies unit, with groups of four working collaboratively to comprehend the novel from...

Here's a calendar that helps readers keep track of the major events in The Wednesday War.

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,...

Explore pond life and action words through Denise Fleming's In the Small, Small Pond, which you can find online if you don't have it on hand. Learners explore the following verbs: doze, hover, plunge, scatter,...

Dirt babies are an excellent way to show young botanists the plant life cycle. They explore the functions and industry behind grasses before growing some of their own. Use the informational text here and consider implementing some...

Any instructional activity that includes time at the computer lab is a favorite for the kids! In this plan, the class heads to the lab to research Anne Frank and her life. Using both Internet and print resources (like the book), pupils...

Welcome to your new job as an astrophysicist, astrobiologist, engineer, or research scientist at NASA. Your job is to search for alien life in our solar system! Throughout a unit of activities, learners search the galaxy through...

Varier wag? I'fecks? Posterns? As part of their vocabulary study, readers of The Winter's Tale try their hand at crafting Shakespearian-style sentences using words drawn from the play.

In a single, soundly-designed class period, high schoolers define good character, think-pair-share about thought-provoking quotes on character (More options would enhance the discussion, worth searching online for other quotes to add.),...