Where does a writer find inspiration? "Go into yourself," says Rainer Maria Rilke in "Letter One" from Letters to a Young Poet. Readers of Rilke's letter to Franz Xaver Kappus examine the words and figurative language Rilke uses to...

Expand your vocabulary unit with a worksheet that specifies the definition and part of speech of each word. Additionally, kids provide two sentences using the word in context.

All aboard The Polar Express! Use a word search to bring the magic of Chris Van Allsburg's sweet holiday story to your classroom. It features a picture from the book, as well as words and items from the story.

Can your class find all the words that crafty cat in the hat wants them to find? Kids circle nine words in this puzzle, all of which are in Dr. Seuss's The Cat in the Hat.

Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club brings together the central ideas of identity, ambition, expectations, and relationships. As high schoolers read an excerpt from the chapter "Two Kinds," they note how Jing-Mei's connection to music relates to...

A read-aloud anthology focuses on Columbus and the pilgrims. Young scholars listen to several stories covering Christopher Columbus, the Mayflower, Plymouth Rock, pilgrims, meeting Native Americans, and the first Thanksgiving. Nine...

Celebrate the birthday of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. by sharing his dream of equality for all with young readers. This printable book includes simple sentences and one- and two-syllable words that make it a perfect...

Penny, Polly, and Peter are planning a picnic but end up pigging out instead in this fun printable book. Including dozens of p-words and amusing illustrations, this is a great resource for teaching emergent readers about the sound...

Fly your flag! Kids attach pictures of words that begin or end with the letter F to squares on a flag, and then write the words below. For additional practice, they write a sentence with one of the words listed.

Direct readers' thinking with a DRTA activity that asks them to make predictions about The Book Thief based on an examination of the cover of Markus Zusak's novel and a reading of the prologue.

Encourage healthy eating, cooking, and goal setting with a word search that showcases a variety of fruits and vegetables, and provides a four-step plan to eat more of them. 

Find the central idea in an excerpt from Karen Russell's "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves" with a literary analysis lesson. As your class analyzes a section of the story, they determine how the author forms the central idea...

Can authors speak to each other across works, genres, and centuries? Study the conversation between Christopher Marlowe in his poem "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" and the responses by Sir Walter Raleigh and William Carlos Williams...

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.

Analyze any nonfiction text with the set of questions on this sheet. Class members practice inferring by noting the main idea and purpose of a passage. They also analyze an opinion in the passage and write a brief summary. See the...

How does one's experience reading a poem's text differ from listening to its audio version? Delve into the insightful question with the poem, If by Rudyard Kipling, as pupils compare and contrast their experience using a note-taking...

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan is an illustrative source of rich prose, deep character development, and strong literary themes. Use two of the book's key chapters, which focus on Waverly's relationship with chess and with her mother, to...

Class members continue their reading of Ethan Canin's "The Palace Thief," focusing on how the relationship between the narrator and Sedgewick changes after the narrator meets Sedgewick's father.

Now what? Class members continue their close reading of Ethan Canin’s short story “The Palace Thief,” focusing on Hundert's feelings about his retirement, and consider what these feelings reveal about his character.

Did Bernie Madoff fit the profile of a Ponzi schemer because, as Diana Henrique contends in an excerpt from her The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death, he “did not fit the profile of a Ponzi schemer”? Huh? Groups begin their...

Create a silly cooking themed story using nouns, adjectives, verbs, and more! Pupils fill in the blanks using their knowledge of different types of fruit, vegetables, grains, protein, and dairy, then read the story aloud to hear a...

Beyonce's "Halo" and Bruno Mars' "Grenade" provide eighth graders with an opportunity to consider how a writer's choice of words can create a very different tone even when the subject is the same. After a close reading of both lyrics,...

Scholars boost their knowledge of the Civil Rights Movement with a lesson plan that challenges writers, readers, and historians to analyze primary sources and caption their observations. By way of reading, writing, discussion,...

After a close reading Marge Piercy's poem "Barbie Doll," class members craft an AP®-style explanatory essay in which they analyze the diction and other figurative literary devices the poet employs to deliver her commentary on modern...