Make the Connection

Develop and strengthen reading comprehension strategies through this comprehensive teaching guide. Your learners will practice making text connections, inferences, predictions, and more using reading passages from the teen-appropriate...

Here’s the meatball in the bowl of spaghetti. Readers build a Lunatic Mystery Case Book, collecting evidence to support their prediction about the identity of the lunatic in Walk Two Moons, Sharon Creech’s Newbery Medal winning novel....

Take your reading group to the next level with a group discussion about what makes a book great. After finishing Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, learners make a class list of characteristics that define a book's greatness. They then break...

Encourage your readers to make text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections with a graphic organizer that also asks them to detail how they made these connections. Reproduce the template for each learner or project the...

Hook your class into an exploration of and discussion about violence in video games with a cute animal clip and a video game trailer. After a quick discussion about how media can affect mood, class members read a related article and...

Examine the features that make a good children's television show and create a pitch for a new show based on these criteria. Writers then evaluate a currently broadcast show based on criteria discussed in class. The richly detailed plan...

Using an actual case study about the Lake Turkana Dam, class members examine the controversy surrounding the issue. Pupils take on the role of one of the stakeholders, discuss the multiple perspectives involved, explore the geography of...

What is it that makes people keep going when they face challenges in life? Ask your class to consider this question in relation to their own experiences and as they read material from The New York Times. Using personal experiences and...

W.W. Jacobs' story "The Monkey's Paw" provides plenty of foreshadowing which readers use to make predictions in this tightly composed, sound instructional plan. Your class reads the story, recording predictions and checking for veracity...

Sure to spark lively discussion in any Language Arts classroom, this article from The York Times asks the question, 'How much self-control do you have?'. Pupils begin by reading a short passage about a study on delayed gratification and...