Practice comprehension skills using the story, The Man Who Went to the Far Side of the Moon by Bea Uusma Schyffert. Learners answer questions, fill out graphic organizers, and engage in extension activities involving writing and...

Students read The Greedy Triangle and discuss geometric solids. In this geometry lesson, students list the geo-solids in the world and create a graphic organizer to show where geo-solids exist.

Third graders complete book reports. They are given the following jobs; chef, who organizes them into genres; maître d', who calls students to share the menu; and waiters/waitresses, who take orders for books from customers, pass out...

Budding historians read six documents related to grievances that led to the writing of the Declaration of Independence. They then craft an essay in which they discuss the perspective of both the colonists and the king. This DBQ could be...

Fifth graders read "My Side of the Mountain." They create a pantomime using vocabulary words from the story. Students create three questions about the reading. They discuss the passage they read and act out words to help them better...

Learn about the government's role in everyday life in a guided reading activity. Groups create a KWL chart concerning the government's impact on the community.

Build literacy through social studies and reading strategies. This lesson focuses on using pre-reading, vocabulary building, and comprehension questions to boost literacy while educating learners on international trade, NAFTA, and...

Are we interested in crime stories because we either identify with the victims or enjoy watching the rich suffer? Do we feel guilty and want someone to take our blame and let us feel innocent? Groups investigate how the author of "How...

High schoolers consider different statements based on the themes from Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, and decide what they think of the statement. They share their ideas as a class and discuss all sides to a idea. 

Activate your pupils' thinking before reading chapter five of Ordinary People. Learners decide whether they agree or disagree with six statements and discuss their ideas in small groups. They then read chapter five and determine...

Students take notes from oral readings and lectures to create a summary of the material. They use different sizes of post-it notes to complete the activity. They practice pulling the main ideas out of the given material.

Students use a crosscheck strategy to improve their oral reading rate and fluency. They are timed reading "Bud the Sub" orally three times, and work to improve their time and expression each time through. Students encourage each other...

Second graders are introduced to the concept of fluency and are shown how a fluency chart is used. They listen to two sentences; one read with the fluency and the other with disfluent reading. They work in pairs to time each other while...

Three different groups work simultaneously in this lesson. One group works on sight word review by holding up common words on flashcards and passing them around in a circle. Another group reviews word blending by pulling graphemes out of...

Encourage your middle schoolers to interact with the text as they read. While reading "Three Skeleton Key," class members note predictions, define words and study their meanings, take notes on how the suspense builds, and jot down...

Just as Bud, from the novel Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis, had rules to live by, so does the poem, If by Rudyard Kipling, but how do the two relate? Pupils delve deep into the poem's third stanza, participate in a grand...

The pull to sloth can be strong in the summer. The couch and the beach beckon, but the lazy days also provide the opportunity to practice healthy habits. Two activities urge tweens to try something new. First, they research healthy items...

What does it mean to be alone and isolated? What would you do if you were all alone in a strange place? Kids ponder these questions as they prepare to read Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Students discover how to read nutrition labels. In this nutrition instructional activity, students review important vocabulary words, such as "sodium" and "calories." Students practice reading labels from various containers of food and...

Is, as Walt Whitman contends, America’s “almost maniacal appetite for wealth,” the heart of the American dream? Class members grapple with this question as they read David Brooks’ article “The Commercial Republic,” and quotes that...

Students receive welcome gifts. In this happy rock lesson, students get the smooth stone rocks as gifts from their teacher. Students also receive welcome poems.

Even someone with a dark side can make a good decision—and vice versa. Readers explore Cole's traits and decisions in Ben Mikaelson's Touching Spirit Bear and analyze his sunside and...

As part of their study of the 1963 March on Washington, class members do a side-by-side comparison of the original text of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream Speech" with a transcript of the speech he delivered. The take away from the...

Two slide shows, viewed side-by-side, permit middle schoolers to compare and contrast the lives of the Pilgrims of the Plimoth colony and the Wampanoags. Four videos take learners on virtual field trips to the Plymouth plantation. And an...