Learn the ins and outs of hurricanes through a series of lessons answering, "What is a hurricane? How does it travel? How is one formed, measured, and named?" Information is presented through informative text and images, while...

Family traditions are the focus of a lesson that explores the lives of children in India and those in your classroom. Scholars examine their own family roles and traditions, then respond to an informative text detailing a young...

Accompany a reading of The Lorax by Dr. Seuss and Tell Me, Tree by Gail Gibbons with an activity packet designed to bring awareness to nature, specifically trees. Scholars take to the outside, draw lines to create trees reminiscent of...

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,...

Where were you when the world stopped turning that September day? Will, a ninth grade student in We All Fall Down, was at work with his father in the World Trade Center. Scholars read Will's story of the accounts told in first...

Most people think of war when they think of casualities. However, Ada used war to regain her life. A ten-year-old girl in The War That Saved My Life is a prisoner in her own home. However. when her brother goes to war, she takes the...

A reading adventure pack, featuring a fiction and nonfiction book focuses on the weather. Scholars read Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett and Seymour Simon and then complete three creative activities. Participants craft...

Fourth graders read a nonfiction story that is presented to them with graphic features, and presented to them with only the text.  In this text features instructional activity, 4th graders decide what the benefits of text organizers...

Fifth graders examine how to respond to literature. In this literature response lesson plan, 5th graders discuss how to respond to literature. They write a response in a literature log each night based on their reading and the...

Teach young readers how to compare two texts and select passages that exemplify a specific theme with Lesson 6 from Unit 3. Begin by modeling how an expert reader selects examples from a text, performing a think aloud on how Article 2 of...

Explore connections within and between informational texts with this lesson about encyclopedia articles. Middle schoolers write encyclopedia articles focusing on topics in American history. They discuss how to determine credibility...

Can literacy get any more fun than this? Learners not only have fun, but gain confidence as well when presented with familiar text in another language. Select books, songs, poems, even recipes written in another language, and using the...

Following the formative assessment of this unit, young scholars present the information they gathered on their specific colonial trade to the rest of the class. Working in groups, learners create posters describing the particular job...

Using this lesson on blogs, you can lead your class through the process of setting up a blog, writing a blog entry, editing their work, and more. There is a link to the blog site used, and attachments of blog entries.

Who would you love to see at your table? Groups research a decade, ranging from the 1840s to the 1960s, read a short story associated with that decade, and plan a dinner party, complete with table set-up and menu. After researching...

Introduce your little ones to the wonders of phonemic decoding. They practice along as you sound out simple cvc words in the context of a sentence. 

In this text-to-self worksheet, students complete an organizer, filling in boxes labeled "The author said..." and  That reminds me of..." Worksheet is a blank template. 

Connections or "links that readers can make between what they are reading and things they already know. . ." are the focus of a persentation that looks at how to make text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world links.

We need the help of your history detectives! After giving them a set of questions to answer, reading groups must create their own timeline of the events. Then, as a class, have each group present their timelines. What is different? Why...

Do you know what a fallacy is? Discuss this term and its meaning with your class. Then, talk about why making generalizations about a large group of people isn't the best thing to do. As a group, study the included letter excerpt. It...

Delve into life in Johannesburg using this worksheet. This resource is made to go with Journey to Jo'Burg by Beverley Naidoo. Learners complete before and after reading activities for chapter 8 and then read a short informational text...

Students read and respond to the text, Mama Went to Jail for the Vote. In this literary response lesson, students are introduced to vocabulary terms and read the book. Students discuss various text-to-self connections they made to the book.

Young readers compare and contrast digital and print versions of tall tale text. The resource includes a character analysis in which pupils compare and contrast traits, and make inferences about what the characters do and say. They...

A video leads off this activity on fables, introducing the class to this important form of traditional storytelling. The group defines fable and hears an explanation of the origin of this type of folk tale. They summarize the story they...