Make analyzing the sequence of events in an informational text easy. Ask readers to craft a one-sentence summary of each paragraph in a document and create a text map. To demonstrate their understanding of the process, participants read...

Students discover how to read with expression. By reading and rereading decodable words in connected texts, students study the importance of expressions and how it can make a book more enjoyable.

Students examine different poems from Emily Dickinson. They practice listening for meter in the poems and make connections between the texts. They also practice their own creative writing skills.

Learners read Lincoln: A Photobiography by Russell Freedman. They complete a variety of cross-curricular activities surrounding the life of Abraham Lincoln, including, but not limited to, the Civil War. Included are reading, art, math,...

“Be glad that all things sort so well.” To make text-to-self connections to Shakespeare’s play, class members engage in a guided imagery exercise prior to reading Act IV, scene i of Much Ado About Nothing (the wedding of Claudio and...

Encourage your pupils to support their claims with textual evidence, whether is is from literary texts or informational texts. You might use the assignment example, which suggests an assignment on what it's like to be an immigrant in...

Determining the meaning of a word based on context clues or marking how the meaning of a term evolves in the course of a document can be a challenge in more complex text. Give your pupils an opportunity to practice this skill with a...

Here is a rather esoteric resource that presents the archetypes found in “The Epic of Gilgamesh,” and would be appropriate for a college-level psychology or literature class, or as a teacher resource. Considered the “world’s oldest...

Show the connection between the main idea and supporting details with a graphic organizer. Pupils fill in the main idea of a text in the circle and the supporting ideas in the boxes connected to the circle.

Good reading practices can start at any age. Early readers work with the teacher to read a short story about a bear. First, they identify basic text features, such as the title, author, and illustrator. Then, they answer several simple...

What is a signal word? Recognizing these words is an important step in both reading and writing formal text. Review a list of signal words (provided and organized into specific categories), and then have your class play a game to...

Help readers recognize elements in a story. They will use pictures and text to gain meaning from written material. Have learners listen to the story A Plump and Perky Turkey and participate in a discussion. They recognize the...

Students engage in a study about the holiday of a birthday with the help of using children's literature. They make cognitive connections of using the characters of the book and relating them to the personal celebration of a birthday.

Learn about the events that helped shape the United States of America. Elementary schoolers explore the Civil War with six different activities. Each activity has a different focus: literature connections, primary sources, vocabulary,...

Eleventh graders listen to a brief history lesson about the 40's and 50's mid-West America and the Migrant workers that worked the fields. Next, learners will read a short story written by Tomas Rivera (both in Spanish and English)....

A new baby means a lot of changes for Peter! Ezra Jack Keats presents this common childhood experience in his story Peter's Chair, the context of a detailed vocabulary study. Before you read, introduce the three new words scholars...

The broad ideas included here provide clear ideas on how to use brain-targeted learning, what activities work best with Tuck Everlasting, how to apply the knowledge gained from their reading, and ideas for evaluation.  Not teaching...

Fifth graders pose to create the uppercase letters of the alphabet for digital photos. They use the photos and iPhoto to create an alphabet book with text.

Poems by O. Henry, Marion Dane Bauer, Monty Roberts, and Langston Hughes provide the text for a study of symbolism, hyperbole, and imagery. Employing the “think-pair-share” strategy learners generate definitions of these terms and locate...

Read this paragraph out loud to your class to demonstrate pronunciation of and introduce context for the given vocabulary words. You might also use this as a cloze activity and have class members read each vocabulary word or repeat each...

Dig into chapter 19 of Running Out of Time with questions covering each level of Bloom's Taxonomy. Learners read the text, respond to the questions in paragraph form, and then discuss the answers as a class.

Are you preparing to teach Peter and the Starcatchers? If so, you'll want to take a look at this analysis of the text, which describes plot and literary elements in-depth and explores potential implications related to diversity and...

Read, revisit, and reflect. Older elementary young scholars summarize main idea 6using key details. They consider the V formation that birds fly in, summarize an informational text, and write critical thinking questions.

Prior to reading Night, class members engage in a guided imagery activity that helps them make text-to-self connections to Elie Wiesel’s account of his experiences with his father in Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Complete directions, as well...