"Let the hunt begin!" As an introduction to synonyms, second graders generate a list of word pairs that have similar meanings. The words pairs are written on sentence strips, cut apart, shuffled, and distributed to class members who must...

That is very unexpected! Scholars take a close look at the word unexpectedly from chapter three of The Lightning Thief. They examine the prefix and think of other words that have the same prefix. Learners regroup in their triads and take...

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas became a quick hit in the young adult literature genre before its adaptation in the 2018 film of the same name. Use a thorough lesson, discussion guide, and series of activities to discuss the social...

Beyonce's "Halo" and Bruno Mars' "Grenade" provide eighth graders with an opportunity to consider how a writer's choice of words can create a very different tone even when the subject is the same. After a close reading of both lyrics,...

Middle schoolers engage in a lesson which reminds them that root words indicate the base meaning of a word, and that those roots are found in many different words that have similar meanings. Pairs of pupils use construction paper and...

Define the meaning of a cognate and use the concept to help Spanish-speaking ELLs connect their first language to English. Middle schoolers explore Latin roots to find cognates in both languages. They relate the Spanish and English word...

Besides the dictionary definition, words also carry the added weight of meanings that are inferred or implied, meanings conferred on words, or connotations. To gain an understanding the importance of connotation, class members...

What fun! As part of a vocabulary exercise designed for Victor Martinez's Parrot in the Oven: Mi Vida readers create word trees with the trunk representing the root word and the branches representing prefixes that can be added to the...

Pairs of socks can be the same and they can be different. Use socks to emphasise the meanings of the words same and different. Your special ed class will examine each pair of socks you provide to determine if they are the same or...

Young readers demonstrate phonemic awareness in words and blends, and recognize 100 high-frequency words. Use a nursery rhyme to point out rhyming words, and change the words by putting a new letter at the beginning. Each learner will...

To generate interest in and enable readers to connect to The Things They Carried, class members write about what they carry—both tangible and intangible things. The class then makes a list of these things and compares the list to...

What's missing from most studies of the American Revolutionary War is information about the role African Americans played in the conflict. To correct this oversight, middle schoolers research groups like the Black Loyalists and ...

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 square root of five and five do not have the same value! How many times have you addressed this with math classes? A lesson gives an explanation of a square root and gives examples for simplifying square root...

What does the sun mean to you? Learners have many different interests that may have connections to the sun. Whether its solar radiation, solar flares, or solar storms, there are connections to daily interests that may surprise your...

Cross-comparison, the technique of focusing on two different texts with the same themes, motifs, events, etc., is employed in an exercise that asks groups to examine two different translations of “The Ruin,” a poem, written in Old...

Show your classes how different means can represent the same data. Individuals collect household size data and calculate the mean. Pupils learn how handling of the data influences the value of the mean. 

Three days of race car design and driving through the classroom while guessing probability could be a third graders dream. Learn to record car speed, distances traveled, and statistics by using calculation ranges using the mean, median,...

Help your learners truly understand the Emancipation Proclamation by asking them the put it into their own words. After reading the document out loud to the class, and briefly discussing the legal language, split your class into small...

Citizens in the modern world can't imagine making the same social choices made by many Germans in the 1920s and 1930s, but they don't realize that they actually do it every day by ostracizing others. A case study of middle schoolers...

Discover how to use prefixes and suffixes to determine the meaning of unfamiliar words. The group views a jovial video on the topic, and then they create a chart of prefix and suffix meanings to identify the meanings of words in a social...

Explore the theme of release and death in Lois Lowry's The Giver with a K-W-H-L chart. After noting what they already know, kids come up with a list of questions about topics that they would like to know about, as well as how they...

In this word formation worksheet, students identify groups of words that belong to the same word family, create word families from a given word, and fill in sentences using words that come from the same word family. Students answer...

Do your middle school scholars need practice decoding words while reading or for spelling? The root word pan is the focus of a nine-step activity that asks learners to discover ways to figure out the meaning of words built on a root that...