Students complete autobiographical writing assignments throughout the school year that they save and rewrite to put into a published book during the last month of class. They include photographs, drawings and mementos of their lives in...

Pupils analyze elements of a short story by working together. In this literature lesson, students analyze short stories. They use the TI Navigator Application to write their findings.

Your class can participate in a writing program involving four building blocks. By exploring words, sentences, writing forms, and story organization, they improve their creative writing skills throughout this year-long unit. Early in the...

Scholars take a close look at Roger in Miss Awful. As the plot develops, readers track Roger's perceptions of his substitute teacher. Learners then discuss how Roger's actions toward the substitute changes as the story progresses before...

What do a photo of Abraham Lincoln, a map for the Battle of Antietam, and the Dred Scott decision all have in common? Learners consider the broader question as they examine documents related to civil rights during the Civil War and...

Pupils take part in a close reading of the poem, If by Rudyard Kipling, in which they delve deep into its meaning and identify its rules to live by. As the grand discussion progresses, learners then relate the poem's rules with those...

What is the initiating event? What is the protagonist's goal? What attempts are made to achieve this goal? What is the outcome? Model for your class how to map out the structure of any narrative. Readers then search for answers as the...

Match and read, what could be more fun? Learners read a story and identify pronouns in the text. They read the text again and correctly match pronouns to nouns on a worksheet. Great introductory activity.

Second graders read the story PUSS IN BOOTS identifying main characters, setting, and significant events. They then read the story JAMIL AND THE CLEVER CAT and compare it with the story PUSS IN BOOTS compiling a list of characters,...

Young scholars read a story about "Gummywolf," stopping periodically to answer questions about the progression of the story. Next, they create a Venn Diagram to compare and contrast "Gummywolf" to "Goldilocks and the Three Bears."...

Here is a lesson plan which is "flexible," and can operate as an individual or whole class activity. After reading a book of their choosing, with the use of a semantic map, learners identify character traits. They infer how their...

High schoolers discuss the characteristics of the literary genre known as "Southern Gothic". They write an analysis of the short story, "A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor.

Students investigate the history of America with the help of children's literature. The story is structured as a timeline that begins at the time of Columbus and progresses to the present. The teacher reads the story with the class and...

Research the Montgomery Bus Boycott and Rosa Parks. Set up different centers and have learners rotate through the activities aimed at researching Rosa Parks. They read The Bus Ride that Changed History: The Story of Rosa Parks, write a...

One of the most important skills in orienteering is being able to read a topographical map. Understanding the contour lines and symbols and the scale of the map will make planning your route so much better. In this lesson, partners get...

After reading "The Senegalese Miracle" about the degree of sharing the author encounters upon arrival in Africa, class members read Mike Tidwell’s “Sharing in Africa” and compare the two stories. This cultural diversity lesson concludes...

Introduce your class to the techniques of proper writing. In groups, they brainstorm their ideas on family structures and discuss the importance of having a male figure in their lives. After listening to an African-American poem, they...

Here's a fun way to incorporate technology into your curriculum. E-mail each of your class members a picture and 10 questions about the photo. Individuals then imagine the story behind the image and e-mail back their responses. Although...

Speed read with your third, fourth, and fifth graders. Learners pair up and work together to improve their oral fluency. Use the technique of covering up unknown words to isolate the vowel and decode the word. There's a sheet included to...

Students discover time keeping by reading clocks.  In this time-telling lesson, students read the story Hickory Dickory Dock, and discuss the measurements of time we use.  Students complete worksheets in which they identify the...

Here is a strategy for groups to contribute to whole class vocabulary development. Teams (based on seating rows) work together to look up dictionary definitions of words from upcoming sections of the book (though previous sections seem...

High schoolers read the novel, Lord of the Flies, then write an essay analyzing the novel. They analyze, in small groups, characters, plot, setting, style, symbolism, theme, critical responses, and historical influences

Students write about an artifact that they are studying. In this artifacts lesson plan, students analyze details of the artifact and answer short answer questions about it.

In this narrative tenses worksheet, students practice past simple tense, past continuous tense, past perfect simple tense, and past perfect continuous tenses as they complete 4 paragraph starters by following instructions.