Develop fluency with a variety of works. Help kindergartners use multiple strategies to understand text and decoding. They will create an alphabet poem book on Kid Works 2 to illustrate and write their own poem. In the end, they will...

Students, through observation and discussion about the Coffin of Djed Mut, make connections between hieroglyphs and the English writing system. They create their own visual story using symbols that represent words.

The sound a frog makes lets people know what it's up to. A two-part lesson begins by discussing the life cycle of a frog and the individual stages with drawings. The second part has learners listen to the frogs' different sounds and what...

Practice literary analysis with your poetry pupils using the mysterious narrative poem "The Listeners." They examine the archaic language and answer 12 comprehension and analysis prompts. Foster creativity with these referential...

While originally created to accompany The Cay, this poetry instructional activity could be used on it's own, especially if you are working on dialect. Class members conduct a close reading of "When Malindy Sings" by Paul Laurence Dunbar...

Illusions and allusions certainly sound similar but there is a world of difference in their meanings. The narrator of this short video distinguishes between these terms, defines them, and offers examples that are sure to engage viewers....

Creating a definition may be easier than it sounds! Give your classes experience creating their own definition. Scholars examine the meaning of the compact-ness of a scatter plot and create their own definitions based on measurements. 

Students create and present a short composition. Using skills, techniques and processes, students select, combine and manipulate sound and silence.

What does it mean to read expressively? Beginning readers hear examples of expressive reading and partner up to practice. One partner reads The Littlest Pumpkin and the other partner reads Franklin and his Friend. While...

In this homophone worksheet students read examples of either homophones, or words spelled the same with different meanings. Students answer 8 questions on this challenging worksheet.

This learning exercise helps to understand when to use commonly confused words. It includes definitions, writing exercises, and questions that require paraphrasing the meaning of sentences. A good exercise for middle schoolers, or review...

Affect or effect? Ensure, insure or assure? Here’s a presentation that focuses on commonly misused words that sound similar yet have different spelling and meanings. The homonyms are defined and then examples are presented. Consider...

Students are taught the spellings of some words with a specific prefix. They comprehend the terms prefix and suffix. Students define the word pre as before and they relate the definition of prefix: the letter blends come before the word....

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...

Using Walt Whitman's Song of Myself and Hart Crane's The Bridge as models, class groups first craft their own epic poems for 1900 and, using primary sources, create a multi-media presentation that captures the sights and...

Does your class know about the meaning of Memorial Day? Discuss the history of the holiday in this lesson, which prompts elementary and middle schoolers to create word webs of ideas about the holiday. Additionally, they create poems...

Introduce your class to "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe with this series of activities, exercises, and worksheets. Class members examine an image, analyze a movie trailer, read a prose version of the poem, look up vocabulary, and pick out...

You might get emotional during this activity - but don't worry, that's the idea! The class practices analyzing emotions, including their own, their peers' facial expressions, and colors and sounds that remind them of certain emotions....

Fifth graders, in groups, research one of the biomes of Canada. They create a multi-slide PowerPoint presentation about their biome that contains specific types of inserted/downloaded pictures, recorded voice, and a sound effect.

Beverly Cleary is the fabulous author focused on, in this author study. Students conduct Internet Research in order to find out as much as they can about Ms. Cleary. They then use their findings and the Garageband program to create a...

Ask your pupils to explore the sounds, forms, and language of poetry by putting together a portfolio of their own work. In a binder, learners collect the poems listed on the second page of the assignment sheet. Each individual creates a...

Here is a terrific learning game that has pupils acting like lizards! Before the game starts, there is a class discussion on the differences between endotherms and exotherms. The main focus of the game is how each team must keep...

What does a successful reader sound like? Help readers gain fluency and become successful readers through repeated readings of given poems. They use the cover-up method to help them decode new words and chart their progress as they...

What is the present progressive, and how does it change a verb's meaning? There are eight sentences on this worksheet, and each contains a verb already in the present progressive. The pupil studies the bolded word (in present progressive...