Teach learners how to interact with both fiction and non-fiction text with a packet of activities and worksheets. After looking over text structure and the difference in text features between different types of writing,...

Teach your class about the Declaration of Independence while giving them practice working as a team. The resource breaks participants into groups and has them answer questions about specific grievances from the Declaration of...

How does recognizing the author's purpose help you draw conclusions about a topic? Using two articles (both are attached), learners brainstorm why each author wrote each article. Are their purposes similar or different? Learners use a...

The toss of a die determines what questions your pupils will answer in this lesson. Learners respond to questions based on Bloom's taxonomy, discussing The Adventures of Tom Sawyer with classmates along the way. They finish by writing up...

Although the article that launches this lesson is about the history of the Periodic Table, the objective is reading comprehension. Using the eight-page informational text, learners answer five comprehension questions and craft one essay....

Scholars work in groups to compare Brown v. Board of Education excerpts and A Mighty Long Way. They use the Paired Text note catcher to organize their thoughts and divide the work using a jigsaw activity to track Carlotta's journey.

Concept muraling helps learners improve their comprehension of a text by giving them a way to organize their understanding of the key concepts in that text. Introduce readers to this process with a carefully scaffolded lesson that models...

Not all compare and contrast assignments have writers compare and contrast in the same way. Some only ask for comparisons, others only ask for contrasts, and many require more focus than a simple list of similarities and differences....

What happened first? Learners examine four sets of images to sequence events using ordinal numbers. There is an example to get them started, and the first two have three pictures to organize. The final story is more challenging with four...

A carefully crafted three-day lesson integrates poetry and visual art. By analyzing and comparing Langston Hughes' poem "Mother and Son" and Romare Bearden's collage "The Dove," readers explore the theme of hope. The lesson activates...

Gather some information, print it onto sentence strips, and then have your class physically shuffle the cards to better understand the importance of organizational patterns in writing. Middle school learners examine information for a...

Use the Visual Thesaurus to predict the subject matter of Rick Riordan's book The Lightning Thief. A pre-reading activity encourages middle schoolers to use context clues and word meaning to discover what the book is about. After...

The most effective way to support an argument is with clear and relevant evidence. As seventh graders read and listen to Cesar Chavez's California Commonwealth Club Address, they work through five sections of a textual analysis unit,...

Simple yet convenient: this resource is a real treasure! Robert Louis Stevenson's adventure novel, Treasure Island, engages readers of all ages with its tales of treasure maps, buried gold, and pirates. With a sleek eBook, learners can...

Help your learners navigate the vocabulary of Shizuko's Daughter by Kyoko Mori with a instructional activity on categorizing words. After coming up with a list of things that grow from the earth, learners decide which categories...

Sorry, Charlie. Scholars take a close look at Apology by Plato. Activities analyzing the text help pupils understand, make, organize, and write about claims. Learners work in groups, complete claim tools, and evaluate thinking by filling...

How do pupils relate paired passages to each other? Here's a resource that helps! The lesson includes a short story and a poem as a set of paired reading passages, followed by some analysis questions. It also includes an essay template...

A K-W-H-L chart is a great way to scaffold prior knowledge. As class members begin their reading of Out of the Dust, Karen Hesse’s 1998 Newbery Medal winning verse novel, they chart what they already know about the Great Depression...

What caused the collapse of the environment on Rapa Nui (Easter Island)? Who constructed the Moai? What was their purpose? Class members assume the role of investigators and use evidence drawn from field studies, ships' logs, and...

They Call Me Güero: A Border Kid's Poems by David Bowles is the focus of a five-week language arts unit unit. Fifth graders listen to various poems and participate in thoughtful discussions, examining vocabulary and learning new words in...

Read The Quicksand Book by Tomie dePaola while taking notes about the story.  Perform a read-aloud, and work your way through the text with your youngsters. With this plan, learners also write about ideas from a previous day, and...

You want your class to meet all of the Common Core standards, and here is one way to tackle the first speaking and listening standard. Given a theme to focus on from "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" by Leo Tolstoy, small groups come up...

Augment your unit on Carl Hiaasen's Hoot with a series of activities about the environment, civil disobedience, making an impact in the world, and growing up. A list of literary concepts and themes helps you to write your lessons to...

Young readers travel back to the time of the dinosaurs in this literature unit based on the story Dinosaurs Before Dark. Intended for use with upper-elementary special education students, this resource provides reading...