A Picture Changes 1000 Minds

Depending on your perspective, solitude can be lovely or very, very lonely. Kids take a look at the simple landscape illustrated in Antoine de Saint Éxupery's The Little Prince, and write a short journal entry about their perception of...

Discover the differences in dialect. Inquisitive minds read poems and discuss how words or phrases are different in standard English and other dialects. Using a dictionary, class members locate the definition of each word, find...

Students explore newspaper articles. In this nonfiction reading comprehension and writing instructional activity, students locate the 5Ws (who, what, when, where,why) in a student news magazine such as Weekly Reader. Students view the...

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 engage in...

Encourage your pupils to express their opinions about why they are reading, both positive and negative. After filling in the title and author of the text, individuals write down two things they liked and two things they disliked. They...

Show, don't tell! Pairs work together to change a list of telling sentences into showing sentences using picture words that create vivid pictures in the readers’ minds.

Do not let Julius Caesar be Greek to your pupils. Rather, make the play a dish fit for hungry minds. Encourage your class members to lend their ears to a series of rich discussion questions so that they can become masters of the play, as...

Students work together in groups to research Afghanistan in the 1970s and today. After reading a story about a Peace Corps volunteer, they discuss things they must do in their community they believe are unneccessary. They end the lesson...

Students examine Seventeen Magazine's America's Sweetheart contest and one of their finalists by reading about Sunia Arif and what made Seventeen choose her. Students then write a 300-word essay about what would make them or someone they...

Students read picture books in which mathematics and solutions to math problems play a role in the action. After discussing the books and how the author used math problems to tell a story, they create their own magical, math-ical story...