Give your class the advantage of Thesaurus Power! They will use a thesaurus to understand word meanings and relationships. They focus on how a thesaurus functions and how it gives the entry word, definition, synonyms, antonyms, and part...

Play letter sound detective with your class, and snoop out sounds, onsets, blends, and rhyme. In pairs, children take turns choosing a card from the pile; as they sound out part of the word, their partner attempts to figure out which...

Lead young learners to understand new vocabulary with this series of word maps. The first of these organizers asks children to determine the definition and provide examples and descriptions of each word with the help of dictionaries,...

Invite learners to determine which affix and base word combinations create new words. This activity allows pupils to play around and create words that match specific meanings.

Middle schoolers analyze how to use writing for generating and organizing their thoughts before communicating them. They use the questions on the first handout to organize a three-minute introduction of themselves to their small group....

Second graders identify homophones as words that sound alike but have different meanings. They, given a pair of homophones, are to explain the meanings of the words using gestures, role playing, or drawing a picture with their partner.

Is it silly or sensible? That's a great question, and it's the question that will drive this entire lesson. Learners with special needs and visual impairments work together to analyze verbal information. The instructor makes a statement,...

The art of writing a letter has not been lost to email and texting! Teach kids how to format a friendly letter with a presentation about the parts of a letter, as well as prompting them to write a letter about their favorite holiday.

Help your future college graduates prepare for higher education with this series of lessons. High schoolers complete research projects about the colleges they would like to attend, and create PowerPoint presentations about their careers...

Learners time each other as they read as many high-frequency words as possible in one minute. Peers record progress.

If you're starting a research project, use this guide to help young learners form the inquiry for their research. With steps that outline the entire process, including note taking and gauging the quality of an inquiry question, this...

Activate the prior knowledge of young scholars as they expand their vocabulary with this language arts activity. Given a deck of cards containing new vocabulary words, learners sort them into four categories, from Don't know the meaning...

An activity boosts readers' fluency in reading common phrases and idioms. Peers time one another and track their progress using phrase cards and record sheets.

Looking for a winter-themed vocabulary activity? Provide each learner with several templates of a snowflake (you need to provide this), and have them write one vocabulary word on the middle of each snowflake. Then, after doing some...

Use the Internet, write an expository text, and have young scholars share their knowledge of the planets in our solar system. They compose an expository writing piece and publish it to a web page.

After going over the five steps of the writing process, pupils fill out "Getting to Know You" worksheets. They trade papers with each other, and have the task of writing a descriptive paragraph about the person whose worksheet they...

Students, after reading Fahrenheit 451, brainstorm inventions that could have been in the novel. They present their invention to the class and writing an expository essay about their creation.

After reading on the topic of their paper, high schoolers work in pairs to assess how to write powerful, precise thesis statements. The introduction contains three statements: a universal statement, a bridge statement, and a thesis...

Research the lives of famous women in this social studies lesson plan. Middle schoolers use various sources to research a famous woman and create a presentation about the accomplishments of the woman. They can find the central idea...

Scritch, scratch, scritch. It's the sound of pupils writing poetry! Focus on sensory language and onomatopoeia with a writing instructional activity. After listening to some sounds, learners examine a couple of poems that include sound...

Introduce your classes to the Art of Rhetoric with a lesson that focuses on Aristotle's persuasive appeals and how they have been used, both ethically and unethically, to influence opinion.

Do these items have the same ratio? Through a learning contract, pupils master proportions by practicing proportions via word problems, graphs, and with manipulatives. An exit ticket checks for understanding at the end of the...

Through the use of stories, artwork, and the KidPix program, youngsters explore the color word red, and engage in activities around the word. Teaching kindergartners about the color words can be so much fun. This could be adapted for any...

Here is a tasty topic for a instructional activity: Christmas candy! Third and fourth graders research classic Christmas candies, then create their very own! They write a descriptive paragraph about their candy, then use KidPix to create...