In this lesson, the students will read and reread the passage closely combined with classroom discussion about it, students will identify why and how farming practices have changed, as well as identify Pollan’s point of view on the subject.

In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this book through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

In this lesson, students make a list of the ways original stories have been revised—changed or altered, not just “corrected”—to begin building a definition of global revision after reading several fractured fairy tales. After students have written a “revised” story of their own, they revise again, focusing more on audience but still paying attention to ideas, organization, and voice. During another session, students look at editing as a way to polish writing, establishing a definition of revision as a multi-level process.

The main character, Mr. Johnson, embarks upon quite the opposite of an ordinary day. This day he spends as a do-gooder, wandering the streets of the city, purposefully taking time to insert himself into the lives of the people he passes. His perfect day is juxtaposed the moment he returns home to his grumpy, negative wife. The irony is: most ordinary days are not filled with all great deeds, but rather a mixture of positive and negative experiences. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

In this lesson, after being introduced to the novel Out of the Dust, students examine unfamiliar words and phrases and interpret them using context and word structure, making inferences and generalizations, using graphic organizers and comparing and contrasting skills.

In this lesson, students practice effective word choice, uses of dialect, and sensory or figurative language in poetry.

Harry Tillian’s father owns a candy and nut shop. Harry used to visit the shop with his friends every day, but his priorities change once he enters middle school. Mr. Tillian buys a talking parrot to keep him company. One day Mr. Tillian gets sick and must go to the hospital. Harry takes care of the shop while his dad is ill, and the parrot helps Harry realize how much his dad has been missing him. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

In this lesson, students create games of their choice to be played with the class to reinforce their knowledge of prefixes.

In this lesson, students study personification in published works of poetry, then create their own.

In this lesson, students work in cooperative groups to find poems that exemplify the characteristics of word choice, dialect, invented words, concrete terms, abstract terms, sensory language, figurative language, sentence structure, line length, and rhythm.

For this lesson, students deliver an oral, informative presentation on a favorite poem that the he/she has artistically illustrated with images, title, author's name, and words of poem on a clay flowerpot, effectively communicating ideas and feelings about the poem.

This poetry lesson uses "Manatee/Humanity" to help students develop skills of noticing (seeing, hearing, and feeling) in relationship to poetry.

In this lesson, students have the opportunity to deepen and refine their understanding of prepositions, including some of the more confusing standard usage guidelines, while enjoying the vivid pictures of Ruth Heller. After reading Behind the Mask, students discuss the book, focusing on the use of prepositions in the text. Taking those experiences as a reader, students continue to engage with the prepositions by composing prepositional poems, modeled on the text of Behind the Mask. To conclude the project, students create study guides that demonstrate their more advanced understanding of prepositions.

Possible Sentences is a pre-reading vocabulary strategy that activates students' prior knowledge about content area vocabulary and concepts. Before reading, students are provided a short list of vocabulary words from their reading, which they group and eventually use to create meaningful sentences. After reading, students check to see if their "possible sentences" were accurate or need revising.

In this second activity based on Ken Burn's Mark Twain, students will consider examples of Twain's vernacular storytelling through his pictures of race relations and the lives of African Americans in his time.

The students will read and reread the passage closely, and focusing their reading through either a series of questions and discussion about the text or the structured journal approach outlined here, students will come away with a working knowledge of the digestive system, its parts, and how they function together.

This video demonstrates the use of word and inference walls to anticipate a new chapter of a novel.

In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this speech through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

“The Real Story of a Cowboy’s Life” describes a cattle drive from the perspective of real cowboys who rode on one. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this history through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.