Introduce young writers to the process of writing a book. Start by reading a book of your choice and discussing the essential elements of any book such as the cover, story, and illustrations as well as who is responsible for each...

Make reading more enjoyable and interactive with literature circles! Here you'll find detailed lessons to begin the literature circle process. Ten lessons introduce each role learners take on. Literature circle roles include...

Students design informational materials to educate people on the importance of matching a new pet to the family's lifestyle and living arrangements. Students use critical thinking skills to make a decision on the appropriate choice for a...

Students interact, answer questions, and extend the story plot. They write a Haiku or basic poetry with their words, name characters, create a new ending for a story, and write a new story with one of the characters.

Kids take a critical look at each other's work in order to understand the editing process while providing constructive suggestions. This handout really sets learners up to successfully offer constructive critique to their...

Students create their own plot-choice story after reading and discussing a commercially published plot-choice book.

Your plane has crashed in the Sahara desert. What do you do? Explore the possibilities with a role-playing activity based on Antoine de Saint Éxupery's The Little Prince. In groups, kids decide whether they would walk to find help...

Explore how illustrations add to a story. Young learners will look at picture books to see how the pictures tell the story. They create illustrations to go with a chosen story, and then flip the activity so they have to write a story to...

A fan of Ari's Crispin trilogy? Here is a packet that contains study guides for all three Crispin novels: The Cross of Lead, At the Edge of the World, and The End of Time.

If you are beginning Laurence Yep's Dragonwings, this will provide activities for the first five chapters. The objectives include making connections to oneself and the world, organizing information and events, vocabulary acquisition,...

Even supposed Utopian societies have their flaws. Using an educator's guide, individuals explore the society Ally Condie creates in Matched. Reflective writing prompts double as discussion questions and cover key themes in the novel, as...

Students share their all-time favorite books with peers. They read and discuss the article Notable Children's Books of 2007. Afterward, they create book webs and compose reviews based on their book selections.

Fifth graders examine how to write a story using comparative and superlative adjectives. They listen to the book "Pig Pigger Piggest" by Rick Walton and identify the comparative adjectives used in the story. Students then write a rough...

Combine informational reading skills with fictional text in an innovative historical fiction lessons. After reading a fictional text related to diseases, class members read non-fictional text to gain knowledge about specific infectious...

Students compare two pieces of literature. In this literary comparisons lesson, students read 2 books that they personally select and then compare and contrast the literary elements of each in a comparative essay.

Your students already know when they like a story and when they don't, but they may not know that the plots of these stories are shaping that opinion. Like all resources in this series, the two activities and quizzes provided here deal...

In this book report worksheet, students choose a novel about westerns to read and then completes six various assignments dealing with the novel of their choice.

Sometimes it's helpful to read certain passages in a novel slowly and carefully, and to read other parts more quickly to move the plot along. Learners tread carefully through Chapter 20 of Lois Lowry's The Giver, noting which...

Everyone is a writer! Youngsters compose an original piece of writing. In this writing lesson, they come up with their own idea for a piece of writing, revise it, and then publish it with illustrations. This lesson includes three...

Students identify key story elements in a fiction text. For this literacy lesson, students are introduced to the various elements of fiction such as the setting, plot, and theme. Students read a short story of their choice and identify...

Students examine the elements of mystery stories and read Rage in Harlem. In reciprocal teaching groups, they discuss the author's development of the story, and complete dialectical journals.

Learners preview the novel, "Dragonwings," by Laurence Yep, make connections between the novel previewed and their prior knowledge, other texts, and the world. They utilize graphic representations including charts, graphs, pictures, and...

Learners create a children's book version of the Japanese folk story "Momotaro Boy of the Peach" and present the story to elementary students. In this children's book lesson, learners design their book to explain Japanese culture to...

Sixth graders discover the importance of lead sentences and practice writing them. After reading lead sentences in books, they determine the qualities that attract and hold readers' attention. Finally, once they have identified the...