Excerpts from John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and from John Fante's Ask the Dust, as well as a variety of primary source documents provide the background for an examination of the migrant experience from 1920-1945.

Add to children's enjoyment of the award-winning novel Maniac Magee with this fun collection of resources. From sequence of events and fact or fiction worksheets, to writing newspaper articles and creating advertisements based...

Recovery from substance addiction is an ongoing process. The final lesson in a series about painkiller abuse and addiction prompts learners to research various recovery options before writing a short story about a character who is going...

Time for a story! Learners of all ages enjoy listening to stories, so read them some common fables and have them work cooperatively to create a fable.  Differentiate for varying ability levels by providing sentence frames, graphic...

Discuss the history of slavery by analyzing historic photography depicting slavery. Learners write fictional stories based on these photographs. This is a creative and motivating way to launch a discussion of these topics. 

Louisa May Alcott's Little Women is a literary masterpiece as well as a timestamp of the formative mid-nineteenth century in America. Using a primary source set of photographs, letters, and portraits, readers discuss the ways...

Research the necessary components of a planet that supports life after reading the article "All of a Sudden, The Neighborhood Looks a Lot Friendlier" from The New York Times. After finding their information, middle and high schoolers...

Teach your class the basics of narrative writing! The resource first describes the Common Core standard for narrative writing in-depth, and then moves into how to apply the standard. Show your class the example essay and quiz them...

What were the virtues and values that helped form America? Pupils watch and discuss a video, read biographies of early Americans, chart the differences between early American religious movements, write journals and letters, draw, and...

Create meaningful illustrations to accompany stories in a web-based art and literacy lesson focused on "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" by Rudyard Kipling. The class takes a virtual art safari with the Museum of Modern Art and then discusses how...

Creating a good main character is a must when writing a creative narrative or novel. Elementary aged writers create main characters for the novel they are writing. They first use themselves as a models, then create a character as a...

¡Celebramos Kwanzaa! Celebrate Kwanzaa through the fictional story Celebra Kwanzaa con Botitas y sus gatitos to delightfully explain the seven principles of Kwanzaa. Dual language learners participate in reading and vocabulary...

“What do you think life is like at the South Pole?” After responding to this journal prompt, class members read and discuss the New York Times article, “At South Pole, New Home for a New Era.” Using resources available from the Times’...

Sometimes a whole story can change based on the perspective of the person telling it. Practice identifying and analyzing point of view in various reading passages and writing assignments with a language arts packet, complete with Common...

How can you tell if a character is a villain? What about a hero? Work on literary analysis with an engaging language arts worksheet. After completing an activity about the four types of conflict, learners fill out a character map about a...

Young scholars read The Greedy Triangle and discuss geometric solids. In this geometry lesson plan, students list the geo-solids in the world and create a graphic organizer to show where geo-solids exist.

"How can a magazine reflect a particular time and culture?" Using this prompt, your class explores the Victorian Era as it relates to Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. They can also play the "Victorian Women's Rights" game for the year 1840...

Combine a lesson on the elderly with grammar instruction. Before viewing a series of provided video clips, class members brainstorm a list of words related to senior citizens and organize these words into categories that correspond with...

Are you one of the 100 million Americans whose ancestors passed through the doors of Ellis Island? Learn about the historic entry point for immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries with an informative reading passage. After...

Keep an eye on the growth of your sixth graders' reading and writing skills with the help of this practice Common Core assessment. Working their way through the six included fiction and nonfiction reading passages, learners answer a...

Can you understand more about how a person acts by learning about how that person lives? An interactive resource explores the setting of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird with several slides discussing the location, social...

How do the narrative and play versions of the myth "Pyramus and Thisbe" affect meaning? Scholars reread Act 5, Scene 1 from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and compare its structure to "Pyramus and Thisbe." Next, they use a...

Thomas Jefferson lived a controversial life. A series of lesson plans shares information about Jefferson's Sons, a novel about the infamous founding father. Discussion questions and other tasks explore different points of view and cover...

Fourth graders read classic stories including "The Magic Brocade" and "St. George and the Dragon". They complete a series of lessons in which they compare stories and produce original narrative legends.