Scholars explore an expository text to answer questions about its structure.

Scholars learn about the Hero's Journey as they read Ray Bradbury's "The Drummer Boy of Shiloh." They analyze the story's structure and narrative techniques. Finally, they write summaries of the text's central idea and use their...

Historians follow FDR's Infamy speech from rough draft to the official address to the Senate. An intriguing activity compares and contrasts FDR's original speech to the official version. Academics also listen to FDR address the Senate....

Elevate children's reading comprehension skills with this collection of guided reading resources. From paper dice with basic comprehension questions printed on them to a system for using sticky notes to identify key...

If you're looking to set your class up for writing effective arguments, try out this idea. While originally created with freedom as a guiding idea, the activity could easily be adapted for other themes. As a class, create a chart of...

Can your class sum up a text in a few sentences? Help them build this skill by starting nice and slow. For this summarizing activity, the teacher marks the main ideas with sticky notes. Learners read and reread the text, pausing at the...

An activity promotes reading comprehension. Readers analyze a text of their choice while activating prior knowledge and asking and answering questions. Scholars enforce multiple strategies to improve comprehension.

Six tasks make up a lesson plan designed to reinforce comprehension and language skills using the poem "The Pied Piper" by Robert Browing. Scholars discuss and define unknown words, identify adjectives and onomatopoeia, review...

Guide your class through a text with resources for before and after reading. Learners ask questions, discuss characters and plot points, point out elements of the reading that stood out, and compose brief summaries.

How can learners evaluate research sources for authority, accuracy, and credibility? By completing readings, discussions, and graphic organizers, scholars learn how to properly evaluate sources to find credible information. Additionally,...

The Bill of Rights is a foundational document of American democracy, much like the Nuremberg Laws were a foundational document of the Reichstag of Nazi Germany. But that's where their similarities end. Engage high schoolers in a...

Identifying the theme or central idea of a text is a skill many young readers struggle with. It is also the second standard for reading literature in the Common Core. This resource, one from a series of Common Core lessons, can provide...

High schoolers synthesize the information they've learned from each chapter of Natalie Babbitt's Tuck Everlasting with a creative summarizing activity. With a graphic organizer for all of the book's chapters, readers title...

Translate the first speaking and listening standard for yourself and your ninth and tenth graders! Learners can focus on communicating in small groups with the two activities presented here. Both activities center around group creation...

If you are reading works by Walter Dean Myers in your class, this resource might be worth a look. Included here are activities and discussion questions for Malcolm X: By Any Means Necessary, Somewhere in the Darkness, Scorpions, Fallen...

Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles provides the text for a fishbowl activity. Class members to sit in concentric circles, with the center circle discussing the topics from the book, and the outer circle observing the...

Energize biologists with colorful images in an activity that captivates the imagination while demystifying the subject of cellular respiration. Participants build comprehension skills and access core content knowledge by analyzing text...

Readers respond to a series of questions focused onJuliet Marillier's young adult novel Wildwood Dancing, and crafted to reflect the levels in Bloom's Taxonomy.

How many of your pupils play an instrument? A musical science lesson will help all of them understand how string instruments work. Young scientists construct a string-and-pulley system to test frequency and pitch. The lesson...

More than half the world's population eats rice as a daily staple ... imagine if that rice could prevent illness. Scientists genetically engineered rice to include vitamin A for just that purpose. However, room for debate still exists....

Get your class to use the scientific process to solve a scientific problem. They utilize the Natural Inquirer magazine to identify a research question which they write an introduction to and collect data to answer. They use graphs,...

Read paragraphs one and two from the prologue of Invisible Man together to establish our understanding, and then summarize the text.