Look back at the third chapter of The Cay with your class. Pupils will conduct a close reading, taking a second look at a chunk of text and responding to a series of text-dependent questions. Wrap up with an analytical writing prompt...

Encourage your learners to examine the setting in Theodore Taylor's The Cay. Pupils work in small groups to put together a description of the setting before reading two more chapters of the book. They use their double-entry journals to...

Building on the previous activity in this series of lesson seeds, this plan focuses on the use of dialect in Theodore Taylor's novel, The Cay. Class members examine specific lines of text, use their reading journals to respond to the...

Make a study of the First Amendment and its relationship to freedom. Pupils rewrite the amendment and discuss the central idea before focusing on a specific phrase. After discussing, class members write a journal entry about the included...

Focus on plot and the impact-specific events in The Cay. Class members use their double-entry journals, created in a previous lesson in this series, to record their thinking about the guiding question as they read chapters 15 through 17....

Prepare your class for argumentative writing with a close inspection of the controversy surrounding Theodore Taylor's novel, The Cay. All necessary articles and materials are linked at the beginning of the resource. Kids use the provided...

Invite your learners to discover the efforts of Night author Elie Wiesel to promote awareness of genocide in the world. After watching and reading an interview of Elie Wiesel, high schoolers work to create a living Holocaust...

Excerpts from John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and from John Fante's Ask the Dust, as well as a variety of primary source documents provide the background for an examination of the migrant experience from 1920-1945.

Difficulties with brain injuries still continue today. After reading Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science, class members read a series of modern personal essays about brain injuries and choose an essay to compare...

September 17 is a great day to focus on the US Constitution for on this day in 1787, the Constitution was signed. Through a series of activities, high schoolers get a chance to look closely at this famous document and the rights and...

The California Gold Rush was not just an opportunity for the male gold miners sifting for shiny nuggets. Small groups read accounts of the ways women took advantage of the influx of workers to run hotels, bake pies, and wading out into...

After viewing the West of the West's documentary Cache, individuals craft either a newspaper article chronicling the discovery of the cache on San Nicolas Island, a historical narrative of the placement of the cache in the cliff side, or...

There is a reason why an Oscar is given each year for the Best Adaptation Screenplay. Adaptations are the focus of an exercise that asks class members to compare a work of literature with a least one adaptation of the work into a...

We know plants assist in the water cycle, but how do plants get water from the ground into the air? Through a series of demonstrations or labs, scholars observe the movement of water through plants. They microscopically view the cells...

After screening an episode by BizKids, scholars show what they know about business vocabulary, then take part in grand conversations about role models and ethical dilemmas.

How many people do you need in a room before two likely share the same birthday? Scholars consider this puzzle by analyzing a set of data. They ponder how to divide the data and determine the proper size of a group for this event to...

What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of having siblings? Pupils explore this topic with the Beezus and Ramona novel study. Additionally, scholars answer questions about chapter one of the time-honored book by Beverly Cleary...

Claudia Kincaid decides to run away to bring some excitement to her life, but she never expects the adventure she finds. A helpful study guide takes readers through the novel From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler....

Ella in Gail Carson Levine's Ella Enchanted receives the gift of obedience and must do what others tell her, but her strong personality struggles with this gift. Scholars review how Ella handles her fate by completing...

Comparing yourself to others is a sure way to make you feel worse about yourself. Kyle, a character in Escape From Mr. Lemoncello's Library, knows this well, as it is difficult for him to compete with his older brothers. Will he finally...

There is no escaping fever in 1793. Mattie, a main character, soon learns that a disease outbreak has taken over much more than her hometown. Scholars discover how Mattie responds to her circumstances by learning new vocabulary and...

As Flora from Flora and Ulysses drowns in her misery, she discovers a squirrel with bigger problems than her own. She saves him from the vacuum cleaner and finds out that his brush with death gave him superpowers. Scholars match...

Standing up for beliefs sometimes leads to trouble! The father in Flush takes knows this all too well when he sinks a boat in protest to its illegal dumping. With his dad behind bars, the son, Noah, takes matters into his hands by...

Change is not always easy. That becomes evident in the story Fourteenth Goldfish. Ellie, the main character, does not like change and struggles with new things in her life.  Scholars learn how Ellie deals with change as they...