Have you ever felt left in the dark? Scholars write essays after analyzing two poems pertaining to night and darkness. Pupils also read a passage and write an essay discussing the author's depiction of characters. A third essay allows...

Is the Fourth of July a celebration for all Americans? Scholars carry out a close read of What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? Readers talk with partners about the speaker's point of view, the author's debate, reasoning, and...

Determine the cheapest way to the airport. Pupils read a scenario about trying to get 75 people to the airport using two different sizes of taxis. Learners calculate the number of smaller taxis needed given a number of large taxis and...

After watching a video, reading articles about etiquette in the workplace, and engaging in discussions, high school seniors create a presentation to show what they have learned about business etiquette.

The famous words of Martin Luther King still resonate with scholars today. An enlightening lesson helps pupils examine the "I Have a Dream" speech in more depth and learn what impact it had on the civil rights movement. Young historians...

Have your high schoolers practice their public speaking skills by writing an either/or speech. Individually, they complete an outline on what they want to discuss and give their speech to the class. To end the lesson, they complete a...

Never again will you need to worry about coming up with a writing prompt! This packet contains, as it says, 501 prompts that are suitable for fourth graders on up. The prompts are paired into four categories (persuasive, expository,...

Visit the Magic Treehouse and take your class on a trip through time with a reading of the children's book Mummies in the Morning. Using the story to spark an investigation into Egyptian culture, this literature unit engages...

Almost every ancient culture observed the stars and saw pictures in the patterns. Studying stars allowed them to guide travelers, determine when to plant crops, when to harvest food, and the stories surrounding the images include some of...

Learn about George Washington Carver's important contributions to agriculture by studying the sweet potato. First graders read about the inventor's observations and prepare sweet potato slips for the class garden. Additionally, they...

Wouldn't it be great to live an a community without pain, without danger? Such a society is the goal of the community in The Giver. Using Lois Lowry's dystopian novel as the core text, class members read primary source materials...

A two-day assessment challenges scholars to read an excerpt from the story, Bud Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis then complete a series of exercises in preparation for a writing assignment. Day one includes an independent...

Have your class explore the art of storytelling through this lesson on fairy tales and folktales. Learners interact with a variety of fairy tales and folktales. They practice telling stories out loud as well as writing their own. This...

Students investigate a hypothesis about birds in their backyard using identification and survey skills.

To culminate a study of Markus Zusak's The Book Thief, individuals craft a persuasive essay in which they assume the voice of a member of one of the political parties during the early 1920s, and advocate that their party offers the...

A challenging lesson on writing a book for children awaits your fifth-graders. They must use laptops, document cameras, and a projector to create and present an original piece of writing. A checklist that has all of the requirements for...

A terrific lesson on homophones awaits your youngsters. First, pupils access a website that contains lists of homophones. Then, it's time to get creative! Everyone gets a piece of poster board and they create a homophone cartoon -...

Student improve their reading fluency through the use of various strategies. After reviewing decoding and rereading strategies, students to complete a timed assessment of their words read per minute and record their progress after each...

Students demonstrate their fluency through repeated readings. They review what a fluent reader is and practice decoding through cross-checking and covering unknown words. They work in pairs to read a passage several times and record...

Emerging orators distinguish between effective and ineffective public speaking strategies. They read a text that fits in with a Native Americans unit and speak about the text with both ineffective and effective volume, tone, phrasing,...

Readers of Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner select 100 words from chapters five and six of the novel, use these words to create a found poem, and then attach their poem to a kite that they construct.

Paired reading passages frequently appear on standardized exams, but finding text sets to use in the classroom is sometimes a challenge. A lesson plan on using paired texts includes a selection of passages and a graphic organizer for...

After researching an issue introduced in Tyson Miller's Dream of a Nation: Inspiring Ideas for a Better America, writers develop an original thesis statement and craft an analytic essay using evidence collected in their research.

The Grapes of Wrath. The Jungle. Native Son. The Things They Carried. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian. To address a current social, political, economic, or environmental issue, class groups pair the reading of a...