Sometimes it's helpful to read certain passages in a novel slowly and carefully, and to read other parts more quickly to move the plot along. Learners tread carefully through Chapter 20 of Lois Lowry's The Giver, noting which...

Reading comprehension is key to success in nearly every subject in school, but how do you improve comprehension in a pupil with dyslexia? Here are several tips that define ways in which educators can provide strategies to improve overall...

Students, after reading Chapter 1 in the book, "The Northern Colonies: Quest for Freedom," assess the diseases that killed Native Americans as well as the causes for the spread of disease during this time period. They contemplate medical...

Learners, after reading Chapter 1 in the book, "Super Power: Americans Today," analyze the recognition of the quote, "Hunger does not breed reform; it breeds madness and all the ugly distempers that make an ordered life impossible," by...

Learners, after reading Chapter One in the book, "Germany," analyze and recreate the political boundaries as well as the physical features of the nation of Germany with the assistance of play-doh or salt dough. In groups, they create...

Young scholars, after reading Chapter 1 in the book, "Cyprus," design and create a nature journal for an imaginary trip around Cyprus. They identify animals and plants that in their minds live in Cyprus as well as describe the landscape...

Students, after reading Chapter One in the book, "Estonia," design and create a nature journal for an imaginary trip around Estonia. They include animals and plants that in their minds live in Estonia. In addition, they illustrate the...

Students, after reading Chapter One in the book, "Lithuania," design and create a nature journal for an imaginary trip around Lithuania. They include animals and plants that live in Lithuania as well as illustrating the landscape of...

Learners, after reading Chapter One in the book, "Finland," design and create in the computer lab a wildlife journal from an imaginary trip to Finland. They include different animals and plants that live in Finland as well as describing...

Elementary learners identify the main elements of story structure and form questions to summarize their reading. They listen as the teacher reads a story and then write questions to determine (1) main characters, (2) setting, (3)...

Here is a lesson plan that incorporates music writing, and reading literature. The class reads chapter eight from the C.S. Lewis classic The Magician's Nephew. Then, just like in the story, they use music as inspiration to create...

Activate your pupils' thinking before reading chapter five of Ordinary People. Learners decide whether they agree or disagree with six statements and discuss their ideas in small groups. They then read chapter five and determine...

Practice making informed predictions. Have your class create a paper fortune-teller and ask questions about the future. They compare the fortune-telling process to the more informed kind of predictions they make while reading. They...

How do you make a prediction? Practice active reading comprehension strategies, like making predictions, with your readers. Learners make predictions during the independent reading of Dogs Don't Tell Jokes by Louis Sacher. They observe...

A reading guide designed for Jennifer Fleischner's nonfiction text, The Apaches: People of the Southwest, provides readers with three levels of comprehension questions meant to encourage higher-level thinking.

Questioning a text is a very effective way for kids to develop their reading comprehension skills. Designed to engage all class members, a reading activity prompts pairs to develop and share their own questions about the ending of Neil...

Young scholars, after reading Chapter 1 in the book, "The Southern Colonies: Quest for Prosperity,"begin to analyze the motivation behind European colonization. They convey the setting of the scene into a writing piece to illustrate the...

It can be difficult to begin a novel when you don't know what it's about. Take the opportunity to begin S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders slowly, making predictions and answering questions about the book's first nine pages.

How do you represent a tragic event? Are stories of tragic events better left untold? After reading chapter two of Maus and studying other representations of the Holocaust (suggestions are included), class members create a representation...

Young readers travel back to the time of the dinosaurs in this literature unit based on the story Dinosaurs Before Dark. Intended for use with upper-elementary special education students, this resource provides reading...

Learn about how the seeing eye dog program began with a reading lesson about Eva Moore's chapter book, Buddy, The First Seeing Eye Dog. With vocabulary words, discussion questions, and extension resources, the lesson is a...

After reading chapter one of The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi, take part in a magic square vocabulary activity in which scholars match the term with its definition and insert its corresponding number in to...

Students, after reading Chapter One in the book, "What the Land Means to Americans," research from a variety of resources Tlingit totem poles. After their extensive research, they create a totem pole to present to their peers to...

Here is a lesson plan in which pupils connect themes and rules to live by from the story Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis to those found in the poem If by Rudyard Kipling. First, scholars discuss their reading and review Bud's...