¡Celebramos Kwanzaa! Celebrate Kwanzaa through the fictional story Celebra Kwanzaa con Botitas y sus gatitos to delightfully explain the seven principles of Kwanzaa. Dual language learners participate in reading and vocabulary...

A study of Alfred Noyes's poem "The Highwayman" opens a lesson about narrative poetry. Scholars read the poem and compare it to the animated video version using a worksheet. Learners look at models and use a template to craft an "I Am"...

Young writers generate descriptive words. They use pictures of various landscapes (from books, magazines, or the Internet) and complete a story pyramid. The pyramid (included here) asks to describe the main character, the setting, and...

Three lessons make up a unit on the birth of Canada. Learners in the third grade will analyze famous works of art, research historical events, and discuss the role women played in the early development of Canada. Writing, history, and...

Elementary writers practice writing descriptive paragraphs by adding adjectives and sensory words to their writing. They use a picture of a monster for their descriptive paragraph. This 12-page lesson should increase your charges...

Using this lesson plan on blogs, you can lead your class through the process of setting up a blog, writing a blog entry, editing their work, and more. There is a link to the blog site used, and attachments of blog entries.

Students write an autobiographical essay. In this writing lesson students read a narrative, Panic in Paris, and review the elements of a narrative as a class discussion. Well-known stories are used as examples for writing their own...

Students compose a creative writing piece based on a painting of a mythological scene. In this creative writing activity,  students write about the scene in the painting and tie in  their original stories into tales from the...

Students create an ocean haiku. In this haiku lesson, students use their five senses to write a haiku. Students watch videos about the ocean, make a sensory portrait, and create a class haiku.

Fourth graders write from the perspective of a child in the colonial period. For this writing lesson, 4th graders create a fictional character living in the colonial period and write about daily life from their perspective.

Looking for a fresh approach to an end-of-unit project for The Odyssey? Check out a resource that has class members write their own hero's journey short story and then craft an illustration that depicts their tale. Apollonio di...

Your class can take turns describing a well know location or setting without giving its name, and the rest of the class can try to identify the location, based on the details given.  They chart the elements that helped in the...

Check out this detailed resource for some beginning of the year activities. After examining examples, class members uses the computer lab to create a personal brochure enhanced with clip art or photos to introduce themselves to the...

One photograph can represent so much more than the images on the film. Eighth graders select a photograph from the Civil War era and conduct additional research based on the subject matter from the picture. Once they complete the...

Young scholars examine the life, portraits and speeches of Frederick Douglass. They consider what made his speeches effective and why he is regarded as a national hero. They write an original speech.

As class members continue their study of approaches to literary criticism, readers examine the symbolism and archetypal patterns in John Knowles' A Separate Peace, and how these parallels are used to develop a theme...

Explore legends and storytelling with your learners. After listening to some legends, pupils work collaboratively and then individually to come up with original legends about animals.

After viewing The Last Roundup, a documentary that examines the transitioning of Santa Rosa from a privately owned island to a National Park, class members adopt the point of view of Tim Vail, a member of the family that once owned the...

Sixth graders explore the damage associated with an earthquake by designing a structure that can withstand earthquake intensities on a shaker board. They then view tips for preparing for an earthquake, and what...

Fighting a war over home soil makes a living nightmare even more real. Class members describe the experience of a Civil War soldier during the Battle of Franklin, poised right at a major turning point of the war, after researching the...

Fourth graders read classic stories including "The Magic Brocade" and "St. George and the Dragon". They complete a series of lessons in which they compare stories and produce original narrative legends.

Extend learning through summer with these activity ideas! Individuals can choose one or all nine of the activities, which range from a summer reading goal to an examination of local insects (with accompanying story prompt). See the...

Second graders practice their creative writing by using descriptive words.  In this language arts lesson, 2nd graders utilize their best descriptive writing to elaborate on one of 20 different bean bag characters.  Students...

Students work in pairs to create a creature and its habitat out of construction paper. Then students write a narrative to describe the animal and its habitat.