Curated OER
My First Biography: Christopher Columbus Storia Teaching Guide | Scholastic.com
Sail with Christopher Columbus on a biographical reading adventure. Young explorers learn about the life of Sir Columbus as they hone their comprehension skills through guiding questions, shared reading, and fluency practice. Included in...
Scholastic
Helen Keller: An Inspiring Life (Biography Mini-Book)
Inspire young readers with this printable biography of Helen Keller. Including a timeline, glossary, and realistic illustrations with supporting captions, this is a great resource for not only teaching children about this amazing...
Curated OER
Retelling Information
This scripted lesson suggests using the journalist’s five W’s (who, what, when, where, why) to teach readers how to summarize a story and to how to distinguish between significant and supporting details. A template and rubric are...
Curated OER
Let's Get it Together! Reading to Learn
Let’s learn about frogs! Young readers are led through “Freaky Frogs,” a non-fiction article. Teach learners how to edit an article so there are fewer details to sift through. After talking through the article, they learn the six steps...
Curated OER
English Lesson Plans for Grade 8
Demonstrate how to engage in a polite and professional conversation with this banking and interfacing lesson. Focusing on explanatory and informaitonal texts, middle schoolers write sentences using banking and finance terminologies....
Curated OER
Synonyms and Antonyms
Mix up your writing lessons by having kids look at recent newspaper articles instead of their own work. They work in pairs and rewrite sports news articles using synonyms and antonyms for a set number of words. Then they share their work...
Curated OER
Paraphrasing and Summarizing
Read an article about the migration of our ancestors and write a paragraph. Pupils paraphrase and summarize to restate the information found in a nonfiction text. They write a shortened version of the reading to demonstrate the...
Curated OER
Introduce Vocabulary: Clouds (Bauer)
What type of cloud is that? Explore meteorological vocabulary using Marion Bauer's book, Clouds (although these strategies could be used for any fiction or nonfiction text). Pre-teach the new words before reading the story...
Curated OER
Introduce Vocabulary: Icky Bug Colors (Pallotta)
Get to know the bugs around us with emerging readers who use Jerry Pallotta's informative book Icky Bug Colors to learn vocabulary in context. Address terms before reading the text aloud, preparing kids to listen for them later....
Curated OER
Introduce Vocabulary: Dinosaur Bones (Barner)
Dig into some prehistoric vocabulary in Bob Barner's informative book Dinosaur Bones. This works best if you introduce the primitive words before reading the story. These are the focus terms in the text: ancient, climate, extinct,...
Curated OER
Introduce Vocabulary: Dolphin's First Day (Zoehfeld)
Travel out to sea as scholars learn vocabulary in context through Kathleen Zoehfeld's informational book Dolphin's First Day. Go over the new words scholars will hear before reading: approach, coast, expert, feeble,...
Curated OER
Introduce Vocabulary: Firefighters (Mitten)
Your budding readers know what it's like to get to a word and think, "What does that mean?" Expand their vocabulary in context using Christopher Mitten's nonfiction picture book Firefighters. Get them ready by pre-teaching the new...
Curated OER
Introduce Vocabulary: Our Family Tree: An Evolution Story (Peters)
Lisa Peters presents macroevolution as a large-scale family tree in her book Our Family Tree: An Evolution Story. She suggests the process from single-celled organisms to modern-day humans, and learners explore new vocabulary...
Curated OER
Introduce Vocabulary: One Tiny Turtle (Davies)
The loggerhead turtle is a fascinating species, and budding readers learn all about it in Nicola Davies' account One Tiny Turtle. This informational narrative offers excellent vocabulary in context, and you'll...
Curated OER
Introduce Vocabulary: Animal Tracks (Dorros)
What kind of animal made those tracks? Explore some wild vocabulary in context as learners listen to Arthur Dorros' book, Animal Tracks. Before your read this, introduce the new words like bother, dam, reed,...
Curated OER
Rachel's Life is in a Hole
Explore how lack of access to water impacts peoples' lives in poor countries. Through text reading and discussion, middle schoolers are presented with the story of a young girl who lives and functions with limited water resources. They...
Curated OER
Prisoner in One's Own Home
Examine the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. After reading an article from the New York Times and exploring the author's word choice, young readers find the central idea in the text and work on researching...
EngageNY
Grade 11 ELA Module 2: Unit 2, Lesson 12
Why is it important to make connections across texts? Scholars discover the answer with instructional activity 12 of 14 from the Grade 11 ELA Module 2: Unit 2 series. Pupils analyze the development of ideas in three nonfiction texts,...
Curated OER
Save a Reef!
Design a public information campaign to improve understanding of the coral reef crisis. Read about and discuss the biology and threats to the coral reef. The class creates a public information program about the problems facing the coral...
Curated OER
Hip-Hop History and the Beastie Boys
So what about those Beastie Boys? Kids read a New York Times article relating the history of hip-hop and rap icons the Beastie Boys. They then answer eleven who, what, when, where, and why questions about the text they read.
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Weighing the War
Study opposing viewpoints with this lesson, which examines President Bush's September 2004 address at the United Nations. Middle schoolers study the text of the address, and then stage formal debates arguing for or against the reasons to...
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Technical Merits
What is technical knowledge? The class explores what technical knowledge might mean to an Olympic athlete. They catalog the different types of information that athletes would need to compete in various Winter Olympic sports and develop...
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Dig In
Students identify where vegetables originate from. In this agriculture lesson, students use a search engine to find out where certain vegetables originate from. Students plot the information onto a world map.
Curated OER
Food, Glorious Food?
How are the reactions between American and European consumers different when it comes to genetically modified foods? Use the New York Times article "Consumers in Europe Resist Gene-Altered Foods" to inform your middle schoolers...