You can prevent bullying in your classroom by addressing kindness, empathy, and acceptance with your littlest learners early on. After reading Don't Laugh at Me by Steve Seskin and Allen Shamblin, kids discuss the ways that words...

Dive into an author study of one of the most beloved children’s book authors, Eric Carle. After reading some of his stories, including Papa Get me the Moon, A House for Hermit Crab, The Grouchy Ladybug, and The Very Busy...

Jewell Parker Rhodes, the author of Ghost Boys, wanted to bring the historical legacy of Emmett Till and the current topic of racial prejudice into today's young readers' mindsets. Use a reading guide and set of discussion questions to...

Turning 11 comes with a range of emotions. Explore those emotions by reading the short story "Eleven" by Sandra Cisneros. Readers analyze the main character's reactions to the events of her day. Then, they write an essay describing what...

Use this multidisciplinary instructional activity to delve into these subjects: English language arts, math, science, drama, and character education. After reading, discussing, and making interpretations about Go To Sleep, Gecko!: A...

What is a proverb? This is the leading question of this resource. First, explore proverbs and their meanings. Then, read aloud The Hidden Feast: A Folktale from the American South by Martha Hamilton and Mitch Weiss and partake...

After reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and an article about the use of the novel, class members engage in a Socratic seminar focused on whether or not Twain's book should be banned.

Use the fairy tale Rumpelstiltskin to teach your third grade class about descriptive writing. Following a teacher read-aloud of the story, the class brainstorms a list of adjectives describing the main character. Students use this list...

Focus on the literary themes of Kyoko Mori's Shizuko's Daughter with an anticipation guide. Kids read statements about respect, abandonment, and love, and mark their agreement or disagreement before beginning the novel. After they...

Would you rather be right, or would you rather be kind? A novel unit based on R.J. Palacio's Wonder focuses on the need to be kind to others and to accept their differences. As learners read the book, they discuss the themes of...

Do you have what it takes to survive in the wilderness? A high-interest reading passage offers practical advice while incorporating vocabulary practice. Follow-up worksheets focus on skills such as defining words, making inferences, and...

Help scholars comprehend a challenging text. Using the resource, pupils read excerpts from an article about the digital revolution and adolescent brain development. As they read, they answer text-dependent questions and complete a close...

Considered an American art form, rap has its roots in places from Jamaica to the Bronx. Using a series of readings, comprehension questions, and videos, scholars explore the history of rap and its connections to the African diaspora....

What are the elements of a personal narrative? Get your class talking by reading "The Necklace" and "A Dangerous Game." The instructional activity focuses primarily on defining certain vocabulary terms (like context clues, plot,...

Third through fifth graders discover the importance of reading and plan a service project to provide books to children. First, they read the book The Important Book and then they brainstorm about the importance of reading. Afterward,...

With What Do You See at the Pond?, young readers explore pond life and practice reading strategies. Learners first make predictions and then read the simple story independently. After a second read-through with a partner, kids come...

Having read and discussed Bullfrog at Magnolia Circle, third graders demonstrate their bullfrog expertise by writing informational paragraphs. Building on the note-taking and paragraph planning from the previous lesson plan,...

Practice English vocabulary and dialogue. An ELD class completes a true/false worksheet about aging and wrinkles, then read an article entitled "Wrinkles Give Clues to Bone Condition" using context clues to determine vocabulary...

First graders investigate Cinderella tales from different lands to discover their commonalities in this unit. They perform their favorite Cinderella story.

First graders use question words to answer comprehension questions.  In this reading strategies lesson, 1st graders use picture cues and predict events in a story. Students use context clues to understand unfamiliar words....

Third graders explore language arts by answering study questions about a book they read. For this reading summary lesson, 3rd graders read the book Verdi by Janell Cannon and identify the plot, characters and sequence of the story....

Students observe and demonstrate a variety of reading expression strategies. They listen to the teacher read different sentences with and without expression and discuss the difference, then in pairs read an "I Can Read" book using their...

Student practice decoding skills and phonological awareness. In this vocabulary development lesson, student identifies new vocabulary through word association and flash cards. Student also reads How he Chick Tricked the Fox making...

In this listening comprehension worksheet, students fill in sentences with the correct word after listening to an audio clip of a passage. There are seven fill-in sentences and QuickTime software is required.