It's easy to miss the beauty of nature when one's focus is on technology. Don't make that mistake with help from a two-page reference sheet that provides eight tips for staying present when exploring the world around you.  

Discuss strategies for defining word your young readers don't know. They read sentences with key words covered by sticky notes and guess from the context what the word might be. They peek at the first letter and guess again.

Students examine how African Americans escaping slavery used storytelling to communicate. They listen to and read the lyrics for the song, Follow the Drinking Gourd, view the Reading Rainbow video, and write and illustrate their own story.

Young environmentalists study the effects that pesticides have on birds, such as the peregrine falcon. They also look at predator/prey interactions. Some wonderful in-class activities accompany an inventive lesson. After an activity that...

Identify and analyze the use of figurative language used in select pieces of writing. These pieces of literature will represent at least two pieces by one writer and at least two pieces by different writers. This lesson would be a great...

As a class, read different sentences prepared by the teacher, identifying the punctuation that is needed for the appropriate expression. In small groups, have each child assume the role of one or more character in The Grouchy Ladybug by...

Here's a clever way to introduce language learners to noun clauses. After a brief exercise that provides examples of different types of noun clauses, class members listen to the Association's "Never, My Love" and identify the clauses in...

Explore figurative language with your secondary class. Extending a language arts unit, the lesson plan prompts middle schoolers to examine how an author's word choice establishes a story's tone, possibly using metaphors, similes,...

Review the terms denotation, connotation, diction, and mood in paragraph writing. After defining the terms, middle schoolers practice writing examples of both connotation and denotation. They complete a connotation and denotation...

Useful in an Of Mice and Men unit, or in a unit that focuses on descriptive writing, this lesson prompts young authors to impersonate John Steinbeck's writing style in the opening passages of the novel. A Six Trait writing activity...

Enhance your lesson on Shakespeare with this poetry activity. After reading lines 139-167 from As You Like It Act II, Scene 7 (provided on the first page), middle schoolers work on a graphic organizer to paraphrase each...

Mourning the death of the Pillsbury Doughboy (from a yeast infection and pokes in the belly), this presentation discusses the use of puns, metaphors, and polysemes. The slide show continues by discussing other popular metaphors and...

Explore editing and revising writing with this presentation. Learners discuss ways to improve a sentence. They discuss how to revise a sentence by adding adjectives, descriptive verbs, and more. While the presentation itself isn't...

Strengthen your pupils' writing with this worksheet, which provides a reference guide to using strong verbs instead of forms of is and have. Learners then rewrite twelve sentences to make them stronger. This is a great activity to work...

In a detailed, creative writing task, potential poets analyze how race, identity, and society categorize and (mis)represent us. The learning begins with an imaginative anticipatory set where students describe unique situations that...

Revisit the documentaries viewed in the previous lesson in this series in order to take a look at the persuasive techniques employed by the documentary creators. Small groups watch the films a second time, taking notes on two provided...

Avast, ye mateys! A full dictionary of pirate phrases and words is sure to get your little pirates in a mood for sailing, reading, or writing. It features a basic list of terms as well as a more extensive dictionary for your class to be...

Expand your pupils' understanding of the short story genre with a study of John Updike and his story "A&P." This lesson, the fourth in a series of fourteen, invites learners to examine literary terms and read and discuss the story....

What a great way to combine English language arts with your celebration of Presidents' Day! Youngsters are guided through the reading of a poem sung to the tune of "Itsy Bitsy Spider" on the jobs of the president of the United...

It's assessment time! Determine your young mathematicians' understanding of elapsed time with this brief, five-question quiz.

Enough stuffed crust to go around. Pupils calculate the area and perimeter of a variety of pizza shapes, including rectangular and circular. Individuals design rectangular pizzas with a given area to maximize the amount of crust and do...

Put the better archer in a box. The performance task has pupils compare the performance of two archers using box-and-whisker plots. The resource includes sample responses that are useful in comparing individuals' work to others.

A verb is something you do — but can you always see the action? Use a slideshow presentation to clarify the differences between verbs that describe actions, and verbs that describe senses, preferences, and emotions.

Scholars discover who Blue Peter is and how sailors used nautical signal flags on the open waters in order to create their own set of nautical signal flags and send messages to peers.