Tell It Like It Is

Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" is full of imagery and excitement for the reader. Review this passage with your class to discuss perspective, tone, and word choice. Then writers are asked to create their own piece: a one-page...

It's the classic scene: Tom Sawyer is whitewashing a fence. Expose your learners to Mark Twain's humor while reinforcing reading comprehension. Eighth graders are encouraged to read and reread, achieving as much exposure to the text as...

Armstrong Sperry's Newbery Medal winning Call It Courage, the story of the journey of Mafatu, a young Pacific Islander, is the core text of a 26-page resource guide.

How well do your learners really know the characters in Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising? A biopoem activity prompts readers to investigate the characters and their traits. Line by line, writers add the characters' relatives,...

How is the wind up there? The class builds a topography model using materials available in the classroom, then place wind flags in different locations on the landscape. Using a fan as a wind source, pupils collect data about how wind...

As part of a study of narrative writing, young story tellers are asked to revise 20 telling sentences and create showing ones.

Not all classic texts feature male protagonists. A script of As You Like It, one of Shakespeare's comedies, tells the story of a female heroine, Rosalind. Full of femininity and fun, young thespians only need 60 minutes to perform the...

Encourage scholars to retell their favorite short story or folktale, adding personal details to make it their own. After reading their book of choice several times, story tellers retell a tale verbally to their classmates. 

How well do your readers know As You Like It? Find out with this quick multiple-choice quiz. Most questions focus on characters and who did what.

Calling all junior detectives! Scholars use the tools of investigation to determine the causes and impacts of the American Civil War. Using viewing guides, videos, group research, and written resources, they discover what it takes to...