With the Common Core State Standards' growing focus on informational text, it's the perfect time to showcase this PowerPoint to your team of teachers. It's 59 slides focus on seven best practice structures: reading-as-thinking,...

Engage further in Esperanza Rising with a focus on close reading and metaphor. Class members zero in on the tenth chapter, examining characters and big ideas. Pupils discuss the text in small groups and as a whole class, and...

Before your high schoolers read Julius Caesar, have them complete this thought-provoking activity! To familiarize them with some of the play's most important lines, break the class into pairs and have them create a skit around...

Give this literacy learning exercise to your beginning readers to help them draw out key details and retell in their own words. They read a short fantasy story about a bear in space which includes dialogue, onomatopoeia, and a simple...

Muhammad Ali was the greatest, as he'd tell you himself. A set of reading comprehension worksheets walks through parts of Ali's life and promotes individuals to become good readers and writers.

How is fixing a flat tire like reading and writing? By thinking about each activity properly - identifying the problem and purpose, gathering information, and making inferences - you can exercise your thinking skills equally. This...

Introduce learners to the magical Japanese hermit named Sennin with a reading response activity. As fifth graders finish the story of Sennin and his mystical powers, they answer four short-answer questions.

Delve into Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan with close reading and evidence-based, text-dependent questions. Part of a unit series, this well-sequenced, Common Core designed instructional activity draws on material from the...

At over 450 pages, John Steinbeck's Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Grapes of Wrath can be a challenging choice for full-class, book circle, or independent reading. The activities in a 10-page sample The Grapes of Wrath...

That is a myth! Scholars take a look at Greek myths referenced in The Lightning Thief. As learners listen to stories in Myths and Legends, they imagine the sights and sounds described. Pupils then talk with partners about specific words...

Take your classes back in time. Learners read real historical texts from both Darwin and Wallace as well as an announcement of their findings. Using guiding questions, they make inferences and draw conclusions from the information in the...

Use this instructional activity to study similes and metaphors and the inferred meaning. In this language arts instructional activity, 5th graders write their own similes and metaphors. A worksheet is provided for extension work or to...

Whether or not your school/state has adopted the Common Core standards, you will want to add this resource to your Of Mice and Men curriculum materials. The chapter-by-chapter activities ask readers to provide evidence from the novella...

Aid your pupils in understanding the terms explicit and inferred while teaching them about colonial farmers. The third activity in the module builds off the previous activity and focuses heavily on inference. Learners analyze a...

Who is telling the story? Readers take a look at the text Eight Days to determine if the story is told in first or third person. They then discuss in groups and complete a shared writing activity to describe how the narrator's point of...

After reading "All Summer in a Day," by Ray Bradbury, have your learners respond to these questions. The worksheet starts out with comprehension questions and moves into higher-level inference and judgment questions. This could be used...

"How important is freedom to you and your family?" The guiding question becomes much more powerful after your class reads and responds to a passage from a historical novel. While reading the passage, they complete a graphic organizer...

Difficulties with brain injuries still continue today. After reading Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science, class members read a series of modern personal essays about brain injuries and choose an essay to compare...

Introduce expository writing with a unit that asks writers to craft an essay to explain a belief, value, or priority that is important to them. Mini-lessons within the unit focus on crafting thesis statements and conclusions, selecting...

Connecting to literature and learning how to infer are two great reading strategies everyone needs to know. Here, the class will read along with the story The Miracle of the First Poinsettia, review folktales as a genre, and make...

Young scholars explore schools during the Colonial period. In this American history lesson plan, students participate in a simulation of school days in Colonial America. Young scholars visit a museum and use the schoolhouse as a setting...

To develop their skill at drawing inferences from observations, sixth graders rotate through six stations, conduct a series of experiments, make observations, and draw inference from what they observe.

Theodore Roosevelt and the Marquis de Mores were both born in 1858, and both came to the Dakota territory in 1883, but they influenced the developing country of America in different ways. Elementary and middle schoolers apply written and...

Do you think you know better? Become a scientist and prove it. Scholars review the evidence for two different theories of the origins of the universe. They notice the empirical observations as well as the inferences to determine which is...