Track the progress of your fourth graders' reading and writing skills with this practice Common Core assessment. Based on a collection of six reading passages that include narrative stories, poetry, and a series of...

Encourage young writers to edit text based on conventions. After reviewing the conventions, fourth graders watch a teacher demonstrate how to revise a paragraph for correct spelling, capitalization, punctuation, or dialogue. Then, pairs...

Check in on the development of your fifth graders' reading and writing skills with this Common Core-designed assessment. Given a series of six reading passages ranging from narrative stories to informational texts, young...

Monitor your third graders' progress with the Common Core ELA standards with this practice assessment. Provided with collection of three narrative reading passages, children must answer a series of evidence-based multiple...

Add to children's enjoyment of the award-winning novel Maniac Magee with this fun collection of resources. From sequence of events and fact or fiction worksheets, to writing newspaper articles and creating advertisements based...

Writers learn about using sensory details as they revise bland sentences with more vivid language. Next, they begin writing the first drafts of their children's books, completing storyboards to effectively plan their writing. 

Enthusiastic readers report on a book detailing what it's about and their favorite part with a picture-based writing template. A nonfiction version takes a step further to highlight what the pupil learned, and a fiction version showcases...

After reading The Mitten by Jan Brett, scholars discuss the author's purpose. Small groups compare and contrast a book written to entertain and a book to inform, then create a T-Chart detailing the characteristics of...

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 investigate storytelling elements by writing their own fiction stories.  In this creative writing lesson plan, students listen as the teacher reads a fictional story.  Students analyze the lack of rules in the story...

Read alouds are great ways to build fluency, accuracy, and intonation. Each slide contains part of a story about a haunted house and audio of the story being read aloud by several different children. Whether you use it as a reading...

Excerpts from John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and from John Fante's Ask the Dust, as well as a variety of primary source documents provide the background for an examination of the migrant experience from 1920-1945.

Illustrations are a key feature of children's books. Using the resource, pupils learn about adding illustrations to their children's books. Next, as they complete their storyboards and work on their second drafts, they consider their...

Louisa May Alcott's Little Women is a literary masterpiece as well as a timestamp of the formative mid-nineteenth century in America. Using a primary source set of photographs, letters, and portraits, readers discuss the ways...

Research the necessary components of a planet that supports life after reading the article "All of a Sudden, The Neighborhood Looks a Lot Friendlier" from The New York Times. After finding their information, middle and high schoolers...

Challenge your class to find the three purposes for writing. After they read three short passages, kids note whether the author's purpose was to inform, persuade, or entertain.

Students read historic or contemporary fiction that is set in and around castles. Then they build castles and characters to use in retelling stories, demonstrating their understanding of fiction texts and period architecture. Students...

What were the virtues and values that helped form America? Pupils watch and discuss a video, read biographies of early Americans, chart the differences between early American religious movements, write journals and letters, draw, and...

Create meaningful illustrations to accompany stories in a web-based art and literacy instructional activity focused on "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" by Rudyard Kipling. The class takes a virtual art safari with the Museum of Modern Art and then...

Young scholars will create a fictional narrative based on the cover of a picture book provided by the teacher. In this narrative writing instructional activity students incorporate all story elements and use strategies to engage the reader.

Students read and analyze the twelve short stories in the novel "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes." They create their own detective that has to solve a new kind of crime, and write and edit a short story with their original detective as...

Students compose myths.  In this creative writing lesson students  use their knowledge of the features of myths to compose their own, then share with a peer for feedback.

Class members select a science fiction novel for independent study. To verify they have completed the reading, they write a summary, a critique, and an outline of the plot for a sequel or prequel. They then deliver a five-minute...

Did you know that November is Novel Writing Month? In the first of a series of lessons, class members are introduced to the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) project.