Create a cross-curricular learning experience around a shared reading of Cynthia Rylant's book Snow. From writing poetry and a singing a song about snow, to creating paper snowflakes and solving math story problems, this resource...

To make vocabulary words drawn from So Far from the Bamboo Grove memorable, class members select a word from the provided list and incorporate this word in a joke, story, or performance.

Sometimes words aren't the best way to get information across to the reader. The eighth handout in the 24-part Writing the Paper series describes different type of figures and charts to display complex information in a paper....

Always check your assumptions when interpreting data and data visualizations. That's the take away from this exercise. Class members examine a failed project that looks at search trends to predict flu outbreaks and consider the...

Young readers demonstrate phonemic awareness in words and blends, and recognize 100 high-frequency words. Use a nursery rhyme to point out rhyming words, and change the words by putting a new letter at the beginning. Each learner will...

Conduct a lesson that leads into a writing assessment. After reading an excerpt from From Seed to Pumpkin, first graders demonstrate their interpretation of sections of the passage by sketching the details from each part.

Ten drama lessons are the perfect addition to your language arts or theater class. With a focus on script elements, plot development, and parts of a dramatic story, the lessons guide young playwrights through the steps of telling a story...

Home in on the quote on this page to explore setting, the author's and character's voices, and plot in Willa Cather's My Antonia. Pupils draw a picture of what is described in the quote, discuss the content, and make connections to their...

A 15-page packet includes detailed plans for three activities related to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. To gather background information, class members research topics and create a newspaper page reporting their findings. After finishing...

Make real connections in literature and in life. While reading, class members fill out links for a chain, circling the connection type, noting the page number, and commenting on each one. When they've completed all the links, they cut...

The events of the Holocaust in World War II would never happen again, right? Scholars research the current genocide taking place in Darfur. Using video and Holocaust Reading Passages, they analyze the horror of this forgotten part of the...

Do pupils know that the Vietnam War spanned a period of 30 years? A war that long is bound to leave devastating effects. Help young historians develop a comprehensive understanding of the war through multiple units on the subject that...

Historical illustrations reveal more than what they are meant to portray. After reading Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, high schoolers view a series of illustrations, movie posters, photographs, and book covers that exemplify...

Radical Reconstruction, the 10-year period referred to after Congress passed the Reconstruction Act of 1867, saw the establishment of manhood suffrage, men voting without any racial qualifications. Southern states also rewrote their...

Introduce your upper-elementary students to printmaking. Class members view prints, select and research symbols in a piece, and create their own sets of prints using styrofoam trays. Pupils can wash off the paint on their trays to make...

Consider the elements and principles of design closely while examining works of art. Learners select an image from the provided pieces to write about in relation to the elements and principles of design. They then sketch and sculpt their...

Students consider works of art in their historical context. In this art in historical context lesson, students are encouraged to think about and record their prior knowledge of the historical period and to make inferences about the...

Students read Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. They visualize what is happening in the book and then identify the main points of the story. Students write a summary of the book and draw a picture of what they visualized...

The class uses Chain Reaction, a magazine, to build a better understanding of Latin and Greek roots found in scientific vocabulary. They use two attached worksheets to help them read a scientific article, using visual clues and their...

Each of the slides in this presentation provide learners with an image found at a northwestern art museum and a critical analysis of what can be seen in each piece. Learners can view this prior to a museum trip in order to build...

Students identify the characteristics of topographical maps. Using examples, they practice reading them and describing the information they gather from them. They also discover how to use the website from the U.S. Geological Survey.

Build familiarity with alphabet letters to ensure your pre-readers are set up for reading success. They examine six lowercase letters on leaves, drawing lines to connect them to trees with the same letter. They will develop awareness of...

One of these animals is different, but which one is it? Pre-readers examine four sets of objects to determine and circle the one that is different. This isn't designed to trick your eye; scholars are looking for a horse standing amidst a...

Help beginning readers recognize that whole words are made up of individual letters. They examine a set of lowercase letters and circle the ones they find in a CVC word. Learners do this for the words bin and cup.