Patricia Polacco weaves an engaging tale for budding readers in her book Some Birthday!, an excellent resource for vocabulary in context. You can use this text to introduce the following words: investigate, snarl, and squawk....

Before continuing to read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, learners need to understand why and how this document was written. First, show and discuss a video from UNICEF to demonstrate the need for such a document. Then...

In this Silver Blaze and Other Stories reading and study guide worksheet, learners respond to 8 multi-step short answer, multiple choice, and graphic organizer questions. The questions are designed to be answered before, while, and after...

Students draw cards from a pile and the student that draws the number card gets the first opportunity to answer the question. For example, if a student selects twenty-two from the pile and question twenty-two is, "why is government...

Students participate in a game show to practice language. In this language lesson, students create their own Dating Game. Based on their level of language acquisition, students create commercials, make questions, become contestants, or...

Students create a fitness schedule for a famous person.  In this advice, encourage, discourage lesson, students ask questions to determine the best fitness schedule for a person.  Students relate this activity to that of...

Read this Vietnamese fairy tale with your advanced French speakers. The story itself is two pages long, and there are two pages of questions that follow. Readers must do their best to guess new vocabulary words in context before they...

“It was a miracle.” Basil Heatter’s “The Long Night of the Little Boats,” which details the miraculous rescue of the British army from the shores of Dunkirk in 1940, is featured in a series of exercises that ask class members to read,...

The artistic choices Art Spiegelman made in his graphic novel, Maus, are the focus of an exercise that asks class members to compare classic comic book forms with Spiegelman’s panels and frames. Directed to specific pages and guided by a...

Here is an interesting topic. Learners examine the economics that led to the founding of the First Bank of America. They participate in a reader's theater experience depicting the debate between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson...

“There is no story that is not true.” And Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, uses proverbs (“. . .the palm-oil with which words are eaten”), a compelling tragic hero, and historic events, to engage readers in the truth of his story of...

The simple instructional techniques described in this plan will help young readers learn and practice basic reading skills and strategies. Before reading, introduce your readers to the meaning of main character, setting, and plot. Then...

Identifying an author’s choice, especially choices that concern craft and literary devices, is a difficult skill to teach. Here's an activity that will make your job easier. The resource breaks down how to teach the skill to novice,...

Help writers recognize how word order affects meaning, discover new words, and confirm or check meaning writing. They will explore how punctuation helps a reader understand what is written and the connections between punctuation,...

Writing a summary is much easier once you've laid out the sequence of events. Show readers how these two skills are intertwined using this graphic organizer. Review the meaning of sequencing first, presenting the chart and possibly...

What do you see? Young reader tap into the visualization process as they listen to or read a fiction story and fill out a graphic organizer. Model this first with a think-aloud, showing scholars how you visualize a familiar story. For...

What is the difference between summary writing and literary analysis? A 16-slide presentation offers some basic requirements for both types of writing and helps readers identify each based on keywords used in both types of writing....

The importance of revising writing is the focus of a short reading comprehension worksheet that asks readers to respond to a series of questions based on the article.

Explore the New York Times, online and in print. Partners take the roles of reader and monitor while each peruses the newspaper. Discussion questions compare the online version to a hard copy print edition. Links provide comparison of...

Readers participate in activities designed to increase their fluency with language. They collaborate in small groups to complete stem sentences about themselves. They write facts about themselves and answer questions asked by the other...

Investigate the significance of adjectives with a newspaper activity that addresses effective language. Readers probe teacher-provided articles in search of the mighty modifiers, and practice by replacing them with a different word, and...

Both the writer and the reviewer contribute to this editing worksheet. Before handing the paper to a partner, the writer lists specific areas of concern for the reader to address. The editor addresses these concerns and offers detailed...

Role sheets clearly define expectations of all group members in this introduction to literature circles. By using a variety of picture books or short texts, readers can practice roles while the teacher circulates to each group observing...