To celebrate National Poetry Month, young writers focus on the role letter writing has played in the development of poets. They begin by journaling three to five associations to a writing prompt that requires them to identify their...

After reading several types of informational and narrative text involving Nursery Rhymes, have your young readers create a dramatic reading of their selected tale to perform for the class.

Your class will practice language and dialog skills by playing games associated with Christmas through these lesson ideas. Learners practice English conversation skills while simultaneously acquiring insight into their new culture. Games...

Considering using The Josefina Story Quilt in your classroom? Check out this sample teaching guide for a list of pre-reading activities.

Sixth graders discover how to create graphic organizers using the titles and subtitles of informational texts. Following a teacher demonstration, they work in pairs to create their own organizers based on assigned texts. Upon...

In this classroom word and picture matching worksheet, students examine 7 pictures that depict common classroom tasks. Students match these with the words that describe them.

Students read excerpts from Amelia Earhart's autobiography, "The Fun if It," and identify her character traits. To aid visualization of her transatlantic flight, they search books and the Internet for photos related to Earhart's flights....

Students explore color terms and related meanings and metaphors in cultural and literary contexts. They use the main colors to explore synonymous color terms and related metaphorical meanings of color words. Students recognize the...

Fifth graders identify and write similes. They define simile and discuss different examples, and with the help of a thesaurus, write original similes that compare the colors of crayons to objects or feelings. Students copy their rough...

Students explore reading. In this visualization lesson, students practice, creating images in their minds while listening to the story The Vegetables Go To Bed, by Christopher King. They listen to the story and then draw what they...

Fourth graders listen to The Bear's Toothache and illustrate the story in their minds.  In this visualization instructional activity, 4th graders draw pictures of what they hear in a read aloud.  Students discuss their...

A civil rights movement lesson designed specifically with the Common Core State Standards in mind, young learners are introduced to the story of Ruby Bridges as the first African American child to attend an all-white elementary...

Through character trait graphic organizers, a vocabulary sorting activity, class discussion, and a civil rights movement slide show, your young historians will be introduced to the amazing story of Ruby Bridges and her experiences as the...

Almost every ancient culture observed the stars and saw pictures in the patterns. Studying stars allowed them to guide travelers, determine when to plant crops, when to harvest food, and the stories surrounding the images include some of...

After analyzing newspaper articles portraying different perspectives of the explosion of the Battleship USS Maine, your young historians will take a stand on which position is the most believable in both discussion and writing.

Poetry can be fun! To set your pupils giggling, have them listen to poems from If Kids Ruled the School by Bruce Lansky. Then, they can study the different types of poetry on www.gigglepoetry.com, and choose one form on which to...

Prior to reading Fever 1793, class members are introduced to vocabulary drawn from the text of Laurie Halse Anderson's novel with a bingo-style activity. The vocabulary list, a teacher copy with definitions, and the bingo template are...

What kinds of human activity do we define as "warlike"? Middle and high schoolers examine various definitions of war and types of warfare, especially as these descriptions relate to the kinds of war we are witnessing at the beginning of...

Young scholars explore interactive web sites to improve their editing and proofreading skills. Using the SMART Board, students identify capitalization and punctuation errors in a given sentence. Young scholars discuss proofreading...

Readers write a formal letter to an author offering an alternative ending to a story the author has written. First, the class reads a story or novel. Upon finishing the reading, they are introduced to the format of a formal letter. They...

As part of a final discussion of The House on Mango Street, groups examine a concept question about the text, record arguments for and opposed to the question, and then a draw their own conclusions.

Using technology, 3rd graders will complete a reinforcement project to differentiate between nouns (common and proper), verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and pronouns. Using the teacher-made template, they will create PowerPoint slides on the...

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...