An extensive portfolio project encourages your kids to reflect on their personalities with multiple writing assignments. From activities on extended metaphors to writing about an important day in their lives, kids explore the way they...

Close out the school year with a look back at a specific event. You provide individuals with photos of themselves, and each pupil fills out the graphic organizer here to prepare for writing a paragraph about the memory depicted in the...

If you asked a fifth grader what went wrong in their day, you may get a more thorough answer than if you asked what went well. Help young learners find moments of gratitude throughout the week with a journal template that focuses on...

Finish a unit on Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea with a narrative essay. Based on Santiago's harrowing adventures, the essay prompts readers to think about a time when they were faced with a challenge, overcame a...

Look back at the third chapter of The Cay with your class. Pupils will conduct a close reading, taking a second look at a chunk of text and responding to a series of text-dependent questions. Wrap up with an analytical writing prompt...

Here's a new take on a new year. After watching and discussing the video of Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman performing her "New Day's Lyric," young poets craft poems that reflect their feelings about the past year and their resolutions...

Explore a basic pattern to practice writing expressions. In collaborative groups, learners examine a contextual pattern and write an expression to model it. The task encourages groups to describe the pattern in multiple ways.

Examine a time of political division and upheaval— not unlike our own—using firsthand accounts. While study of the Civil War often takes center stage in the classroom, the 1850s and 1860s were a period of profound change in other areas...

Here is a good interdisciplinary project that combines creative and narrative writing with studies of the Holocaust. Your young historians will compose a diary of experiences from the perspective of an individual living during the time...

Should men be willing to work for women? Can women think as logically as men? Here is an interesting activity in which learners complete a survey regarding gender roles and then consider whether their scores reflect traditional or...

Go beyond a traditional end-of-the-year survey and have your middle school pupils compile a portfolio of work illustrating their progression as a writer. 

Building upon prior lessons in the series, this reading and writing exercise requires pupils to look back at their own writing, track character development in the novel The Cay, and analyze how Phillip has changed. The reading focus is...

"Go West, young man!" is a familiar refrain in American history. But why did people leave their homes in the East to travel westward and what impact did that movement have on people already living in the American West? By examining...

Make a study of Timothy and his development as a character over the course of the first half or so of The Cay. This idea focuses in particular on chapters 10 through 12. Learners start out by working on double-entry journals created in...

Four activities conclude a unit through discussion and activities inspired by reflection. Scholars revisit their storybook from the first unit. Self-portraits showcase thought bubbles with written statements. Groups write and perform a...

Strengthen the bonds of friendship within your class with a reading of E.B. White's award-winning novel, Charlotte's Web. Focusing on the unique characters in the story and the relationships they develop, young readers draw...

Here is a nice set of activities and discussion questions to accompany your class reading of No Pretty Pictures, a memoir of a young girl's experiences and struggle for survival during the Holocaust.

Although it does not properly address how to use the Common Core standard, this resource does provide a decent writing prompt that explores how minor characters influence Hamlet's decisions throughout the play. The prompt can be used for...

Within collaborative groups, scholars factor a degree six polynomial. They can factor the polynomial using many different strategies — a great way to prompt mathematical discussion.

What are the internal and external qualities of a great leader? After individuals reflect on these questions, the group generates a master list. Individuals then consider what they have to offer and where they need help from others to...

The Cay has been criticized by groups such as the Council on Interracial Books for Children because of the way race is portrayed. Explore the argument against the book while taking the author's perspective into account. Class members...

Boost self-management skills with a sports-themed prompt that challenges scholars to reflect on their goals, choose one, and make a plan to achieve it. 

If friendship were a soup, what ingredients would be in it? As part of a study of Marcus Pfister's Rainbow Fish and the Big Blue Whale, kids engage in a series of friendship-themed activities using materials contained in this richly...

Is it possible for a rectangle to have the same area and perimeter? If you disregard units, it happens! In a challenging task, groups work to determine the rectangles that meet these criterion. The hope is that learners will naturally...