Students participate in a shared writing experience about rice. For this writing lesson, students listen to  Norah Dooley's, Everybody Cooks Rice. They write about, and discuss different ways their families and those in the book use...

Following the book, Marco Paul's Travels on the Erie Canal, readers complete an activity for each chapter, take part in discussions, and respond to several questions. To show what they know, scholars create an alphabet book using primary...

Use Langston Hughes's poem, "Words Like Freedom," to explore the concepts of freedom and liberty. Learners read the poem, determine the theme, and use the provided graphic organizer to examine the connotative and denotative meanings of...

This compelling plan based on the letters in the book Dear Miss Breed engages readers in learning what it was like for Japanese Americans following the attacks at Pearl Harbor. After reading the letters, young scholars will...

Enhance your lesson on Shakespeare with this poetry activity. After reading lines 139-167 from As You Like It Act II, Scene 7 (provided on the first page), middle schoolers work on a graphic organizer to paraphrase each...

Sor Juana, considered one of the first feminist writers and a great Latin American poet, is the topic and inspiration for this excellent lesson. Use the introduction, guiding questions, and learning objectives to lead your class into a...

Find out how much your class knows about literary elements with a quick pre-assessment. Pupils work first individually to identify the instances of personification, metaphor, simile, and more, and then with group members to...

In a previous lesson plan, learners build an ammeter. That ammeter, or a pre-made one, is required in order to carry out this lesson plan. The objective is for lab groups to design a way to connect solar cells that can recharge a...

A quick mimi-lesson models how to replace a fixed mindset with a growth mindset, a mindset that says improvement is possible with practice. Included is an activity that asks individuals to rewrite 10 fixed mindset statements with 10...

Readers examine the conversation between Friar Laurence and Romeo in Act 3, scene 3 of Romeo and Juliet and consider how Shakespeare's word choices impact the development of Romeo's character.

Who is to blame for Bernie Madoff's crime? Class members look for evidence Diana B. Henriques uses in The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust to support her claims that we share the responsibility with Madoff.

"True-crime stories, murder mysteries, up-to-the-minute online news reports, and (as always) rumor and innuendo grab our attention faster than any call for justice, human rights, or ceasefires." Or so says Walter Mosley in his Newsweek...

Refresh my memory please. Scholars quickly read over the Myth of Cronus to refresh their memories of the story. They then get in groups and write parts of the myth on sticky notes that relate to the elements of mythology, sticking their...

What would you think if you saw a moose in a tree? Read about an impressive moose and practice using context clues with a cloze passage, which includes a word bank at the bottom of the pages for kids to reference.

In this high frequency words worksheet, students read and write the thirteen spelling and high frequency words onto the provided lines. Students fill in the correct words to complete each of the five given sentences.

Learners discover enunciation and alliteration by reading tongue twisters in class.  In this language arts activity, students listen and repeat some of the classic childhood tongue twisters along with their teacher.  Learners...

Students review what they know about quick breads and bananas. In this art lesson, students discover two different recipes for Banana Muffins off of the computer. Students prepare a recipe for Bananas Muffins carefully and clean up their...

Students read the article Blood Test Predicts When You'll Die. In this reading comprehension lesson plan, students read the article and complete a variety of activities. They work individually and in pairs to complete questions dealing...

Students practice reading fluency and reading with expression. They develop reading fluency using timed reading. Students read "Arthur's Reading Race" and record how far they read in one minute. They repeat the reading in order to see...

There are different types of reading meant for different texts. Discuss four of these with your emerging readers. When does one perform an extensive or intensive reading? When does one skim or scan a text? How are these all different? 

Young writers read excerpts from Gary Paulsen's memoir to identify figurative and literal language that contain sensory details. They determine which selections are examples of sensory language and fi the language is used literally or...

To better understand the role women played in early 17th century US history, class members examine the National Women's History Museum's online exhibit, Building the New World: the Women of Jamestown Settlement. After studying the 11...

Jo March is all grown up in Louisa May Alcott's Little Men, and a new generation of children is benefitting from her tutelage. Young learners read a passage from the novel before answering four comprehension questions about plot details...

Louisa May Alcott's third novel about Josephine March, spunky-sister-turned-successful-writer, is the focus of a reading comprehension activity. As class members read an excerpt from the third chapter of Jo's Boys, they answer four...