Choose a side! Pupils watch and read several nonfiction resources about zoos. After gathering their research, they choose a side either for or against closing zoos. Scholars complete KWL charts, anticipation guides, flow charts, and...

Can you tell everything about a character based on their actions? Delve into the prominent characters of Karen Russell's "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves" with helpful reading tips and discussion questions. A thorough lesson...

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...

Young readers can be exposed to the literary works of Mark Twain as they interact with challenging text and gain experience by reading the complex passages of chapter two "The Glorious Whitewasher" from his famous book, The Adventures of...

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 young scholars, this resource provides reading...

Examine human resilience across two texts with a detailed unit. Over the course of a week, learners will conduct a close reading of excerpts from Unbroken and Farewell to Manzanar. The resource includes clear procedures for reading and...

Make reading more enjoyable and interactive with literature circles! Here you'll find detailed lessons to begin the literature circle process. Ten lessons introduce each role learners take on. Literature circle roles include...

Use consonant digraphs to introduce learners to word patterns and high frequency words. They observe a chart with the digraphs /sh/, /ch/, /th/, and /wh/. After listening to each of these phonemes, scholars watch as the teacher...

Strap on those backpacks, it's time to travel through history with this literature unit based on the first four books of The Magic Tree House series. While reading through these fun stories, children create story maps, record...

Even though readers investigate matters of the heart, this activity promotes the inner workings of learners' brains. The fifth lesson of six has the teacher first model the strategy to the class before having small groups practice. To...

Bring the applicable morals of Aesop's Fables to your classroom with a series of reading comprehension activities. With 12 different fables with activities and exercises, the packet focuses on the ways learners can apply the fables...

Improve writing skills using methods from Robert Gay's Writing Through Reading; Gay espouses reproducing the work of successful writers to build the ability to convey original ideas effectively. Young writers transcribe, paraphrase,...

Here is a literacy worksheet where learners read the passages and make inferences from them. Students also perform several tasks of writing from the prompts given. This three-page worksheet is chock full of good reading comprehension...

The westward expansion is the focus of a read-aloud anthology. Pupils will listen to and discuss stories about going West, an adventure on the Erie Canal, the Trail of Tears, the Oregon Trail, the Pony Express, and the transcontinental...

A visual literary lesson provides learners with OPTIC (Observations, Predictions, Themes, Inferences, Conclusions), a reading strategy to help them understand and interpret visual and written texts. Scholars practice the strategy with a...

Eighteen lessons make a read-aloud anthology all about early Asian civilizations. Scholars listen to and discuss stories about the Indus River Valley, Hinduism, Silk, Buddhism, the Great Wall of China, Diwali, and more, alongside stories...

Elementary schoolers observe and demonstrate a variety of strategies for reading with expression. They listen to the teacher read A Fine, Fine School with and without expression and discuss the differences. Then in pairs, read the...

As children observe the teacher reading Today I Feel Silly and Other Moods That Make My Day, they take note of the role punctuation plays in the emotion or expression used. They then take turns reading a book with a partner so they can...

Reciting poetry is a great way to build oral language skills and build classroom community. Pupils look at the text elements of poetry and choose a poem to read aloud. They focus on rhythm, fluency, and expression. This is a great way to...

Read efficiently and effectively with a passage about making predictions and using headlines and visual aids as clues. After kids read a few paragraphs in the passage, they answer five comprehension questions on the side of the page.