What can young scientists discover from dissecting an owl pellet? Explore the owl food chain, beginning with an introduction to these predatory birds. Suggested strategies here include creating a podcast and purchasing a poster, however...

This activity presents a real-world problem about an epidemic of influenza spreading through a city. Learners refer to a graph that shows the number of individuals infected in relation to the number of weeks that have elapsed since...

After reading Loree Leedy's There's a Frog in My Throat: 440 Animal Sayings a Little Bird Told Me, kids create and illustrate their own poems that convey the meaning of an idiom. The poems are then transferred into Shutterfly's Photo...

After reading The Great Gatsby, groups return to the text and note passages where Fitzgerald uses symbols and color imagery in his narrative. They then develop a presentation that explains the context, the implications, and possible...

Do modern citizens interpret the Fourteenth Amendment the way it was intended? Scholars study the Slaughterhouse Cases to see how judges interpreted the amendment in the 1800s. Following the reading on the subject, they answer...

What do consumers need to know about overfishing before buying fish? Scholars consider the question as they prepare for their performance task, which is to create a consumer guide for people about purchasing fish responsibly. After...

What can you contribute? Scholars read text to determine how ants contribute to the rainforest. First, they categorize and sort facts gathered from reading. Next, readers focus on specific terms in each paragraphs of the text Ants by...

It's time to proof read! Pupils read and analyze proof paragraphs from a model essay. They then practice writing their own proof paragraphs to express an opinion about offshore oil drilling. 

Included here are step-by-step instructions for conducting a close reading of The Voice That Challenged a Nation by Russell Freedman. After an individual and class reading, class members read carefully through the text excerpt,...

Do you remember the days when a cup of coffee cost five cents? At A.W. Dennett restaurant in 1894, you could buy a five-cent cup of coffee and as well as a five-cent slice of pie to accompany it. The menu from that year is a primary...

Separate compound words into their respective parts to help scholars with vocabulary and spelling. They read a brief explanation of this type of word and then combine five word pairs written out in expanded form. Learners then match...

Introduce your budding readers to the dictionary. They read a brief introduction on dictionary features, observing pictures and examples of one-syllable words they could find in a dictionary. Using the word list, they determine which...

There are eight homograph riddles here: can your scholars figure them out? For each, there are three definitions and a picture. Learners use the picture and multiple meanings as clues, recording a word that matches all three. They read...

Beginning readers must solve for the missing letter in these spelling questions. There are three pairs of rhyming words here, each without an initial letter. They complete the word, and for the second box, draw a picture. The alphabet is...

Similes are a great way to get your writers thinking about descriptive details. They read a brief explanation which covers clichés and the general wording of a simile. Then, learners try a few on their own. First, they complete nine...

Investigate spelling patterns that make the /oo/ sound in this labeling worksheet. Scholars read a brief introduction explaining the different vowel pairings that make the long /oo/ sound, along with word examples. Then, they...

Teach your class the differences between statements and questions with a simple activity. After reading four statements, third graders rewrite the sentences as questions. They do the opposite in the last section. A helpful activity for...

Over the course of the lesson, your pupils read and analyze a translated eight-line poem from the Tang Dynasty written by Du Fu, a poet caught behind enemy lines during the An Lu-Shan rebellion (755-763). Literary/historical context is...

Give me a W! Give me an O! Give me a W! What does it spell? Wow! Teach youngsters how to write letters and numbers with colorful tracing activities that include encouraging audio and make writing enjoyable. Soon, they will be writing...

It's no secret that children can be very opinionated, but rather than fight against this natural tendency, embrace it with this primary grade writing project. After a shared reading of a children's book about...

Practice writing one and two nouns with a series of grammar activities. English learners read the instructions and list nouns, write sentences, and focus on irregular endings.

W.B. Yeats' poem, "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" is featured on a worksheet that asks readers to respond to a series of reading comprehension questions.

Extra! Extra! Read all about past and present energy use in a classroom-made historical newspaper. Useful as a cross-curricular assignment between science, history, and language arts, the project is sure to get young journalists...

The reading of a contextual essay launches a study of Black Americans who served in Congress from 1870 through 1887. Young historians identify the African Americans who served during this period, investigate the ways they won national...