Students learn characteristics of an effective personal narrative.  In this personal narrative lesson, students discover ways to show rather than tell, adding richness and detail to their writing.  Students evaluate a news...

Explore the text, Cold and Hot, with comprehension strategies for young readers. First, give them a purpose for reading: find out what the boy wore outside in the snow! Then have them use one-to-one matching and picture clues to...

Youngsters explore the importance of becoming fluent, expressive readers by changing their voice when reading a book. They read the book Ella Sarah Gets Dressed, by Margaret Chodos-Irvine, and poems from the book For Laughing Out...

Start kids thinking about point of view and autobiographies by telling them a short story about your morning (first person), and then asking a volunteer to re-tell the story to you (second person). There are tips to help you tie this...

Like Oskar, the curious boy in Jonathan Safran Foer’s story, class members journey through other “stories that the mouth can’t tell” to find another sentence that uses a word found in novel. Individuals create their own vocabulary list,...

Author Laura Ingalls Wilder takes readers back to the good ole days. In Little House in the Big Woods, she tells scholars about a family living in the woods during the 1870s. While reading, they complete sentences with vocabulary words,...

Explore the cultural heritage through of your class through reading, writing, and speaking exercises. They create illustrated mini-books that express their unique cultural and personal experiences. They share their stores with the class...

Now that your beginning French speakers have some basic vocabulary, give them this worksheet to assess their visual and reading comprehension. Can they tell what is going on in the pictures? Can they find the sentence that correctly...

Fred Gipson's Old Yeller tells of a stray yellow dog who becomes the best friend a boy could ever have. While reading the novel, learners complete sentences with new vocabulary words, answer comprehension questions, and create...

Scholars use nouns from a word bank to complete sentences in a fill-in-the-blank worksheet that tells a tale about the California Gold Rush. 

Some war heroes have four legs. War Horse tells of a courageous foal taken from his farm and sent into war. Joey, the foal, loves and touches the lives of many soldiers. However, his heart is still with his boy back on the farm. Scholars...

A painting is worth a thousand words—in a different world! Lucy and Edmund sail away into Narnia using a picture of a ship at sea. The story tells of their adventures and the islands they visit. Scholars work through activities about the...

Crafty sentence builders go beyond the plan old subject and verb construction and add details that make their sentences more exciting. This worksheet models how to add directional prepositions like beyond and toward to enliven writing. A...

Young readers listen to the story The Three Little Pigs, and discuss what abnormal characteristics the pigs and the wolf have. They relate these characteristics to personification, and practice writing sentences using personification.

While this plan uses Middle School Advantage software by Encore, you could still use the attached worksheet if you don't have access to the program. Encourage Spanish learners to work with different adjectives and write descriptive...

Learners research an endangered animal using both printed material and the Internet. They organize their information and develop sentences to write a story to create a flip-it book. A worksheet is embedded in the lesson for students' use.

Children review and study the importance of remembering to put a period at the end of each sentence. They write two original sentences that end with a period, and share them with the class. A good, confidence-building activity!

Where and when should you use prepositions? A handy learning exercise provides examples and instructions about prepositions and prepositional phrases, as well as eight practice sentences. Learners underline the prepositional phrases and...

Work on punctuation such as placing quotation marks around direct quotes, and inserting commas to set off a quotation. The lesson includes a printable activity sheet and additional practice sentences.

Why should we read with expression when we read? Engage your learners in this discussion and teach them the easiest way to gauge expression: the end mark! Is it a question mark? An exclamation point? This helps you determine how to...

Third graders listen to a story read aloud in order to discover the concept of cause and effect. With a partner, they make a cause/effect puzzle from a sentence strip. They then choose and read a story on the internet and make a...

How many words do you have to know to be able to select the correct sentence translation? Beginning and Intermediate Spanish speakers read Spanish sentences and identify their correct translation from a list of options. Although some of...

What is special about summer (fall, winter, or spring)? Using a bag filled with season-related items (for summer items like sunglasses, a swimming suit, etc.) the class take turns taking out one item. A discussion of how each item might...

Youngsters retell the story of The Three Billy Goats Gruff. They write a sentence for speech bubbles for a character in the story, identify the phrases that can be used for retelling a story, and in small groups write a sentence for the...