For this lesson, students are invited to attend a 19th Century party as a character from Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. To play this role, students must understand the values and customs Dickens' characters represented in Victorian society. This lesson is divided into three stages: Group Investigative Roles, Individual Characterizations, and Individual Presentations. Students collaboratively research the life and times of Charles Dickens as it relates to a character, and write and present a first-person character analysis.

This lesson sets the stage for high-interest reading with a purpose through a biography project. Students work together to generate questions they would like to answer about several well-known people, then each student chooses one of these and finds information by reading a biography from the library and doing Internet research. Students create a graphic organizer (a web) to organize the facts they have found and share what they have learned about their subjects through oral presentations. Students evaluate themselves and their classmates by using a rubric during the research and graphic organizer-creation process and by giving written feedback on one another's presentations.

In this lesson, students are given the opportunity to be imaginative as they create illustrated postcards that depict one of the settings of their novel choices featuring journeys. Furthermore, they communicate about the importance of the settings as they write the text of their postcards.

In this lesson, students are introduced to familiar characters, from literature and from popular culture, whom readers first encounter as adults, but whose childhood stories are only told later. Students first discuss Merlin from the stories of King Arthur before reading Jane Yolen's Merlin and the Dragon. They then discuss the characteristics and stories of other familiar literary characters who are first introduced as adults. Then, in groups, students plan their own versions of a childhood for a selected character, and describe that childhood in the form of a short story, journal entry, or time capsule letter. This lesson uses Jane Yolen's Merlin and the Dragon to model the concept, as well as several examples from literature and popular culture. A suggested booklist is also provided.

Facebook-like pages used as book reports provide students a unique format to review several elements of fiction typically found in a traditional book report. Through the sharing of their Facebook-like pages in class, students will have suggestions for future reading.

Students work in groups to read and discuss a book, keeping track of their feelings and opinions about the book, as well as facts and quotations, as they read. Students then decide which parts of their review they wish to annotate, with each student in the group responsible for one topic. Each student writes about his or her topic, including bibliographic information.

In this lesson, students meet in small groups to reflect on and share their thoughts after reading a short story, poem, or chapter in a novel.

This teacher's guide for The Boy on the Wooden Box by Leon Leyson with Marilyn J. Harran and Elisabeth B. Leyson contains discussion questions and activities for reading comprehension, learning about craft and structure, integrating information, and writing practice.

Ruri, a young Japanese girl, and her family are taken to an internment camp during WWII because the US government was afraid Japanese Americans would ally with Japan. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

In this lesson, students will continue their close read from the previous lesson to include background knowledge about the important archetype of the hero’s
journey by reading an article.

In this lesson, students will build background knowledge about mythology through a continued close read of the text "Shrouded in Myth."

Through this lesson, the teacher will model the think-aloud strategy for students. Components of think-alouds will be introduced, as well as type of text interactions. Students will develop the ability to use think-alouds to aid in reading comprehension tasks.

Who owns what you compose? Who controls what happens with the words, images, music, sounds, videos that you create? What rights do you have to use other people’s compositions? This unit plan focuses on helping students find answers to these questions. Students explore a range of resources on fair use and copyright then design their own audio public service announcements (PSAs), to be broadcast over the school’s public address system. Students begin by completing a survey about fair use. Students discuss their responses to the survey and then research facts about fair use and copyright. Next, students become familiar with PSAs before writing and producing their own announcements, which are shared with other students. Work can also be published as podcasts on the Internet.

Using a scaffolded process and moving from whole group to individual work, students will explore iconic images from the Civil Rights Movement and create captions that summarize the features and ideas in the images. To publish their work, students can use the ReadWriteThink Printing Press, Trading Card Creator, or Stapleless Book student interactives. This lesson uses the topic of the Civil Rights movement, but can also be done with other thematic sets of images.

This article describes scientists Ken and Molly Glander’s research on the eating habits of howler monkeys in Costa Rica. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

In this short story, Jose learns a valuable lesson about himself when he tries to impress Estella by challenging her to a game of racquetball. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

Chuck Close is an American artist who overcomes many obstacles in his life, both unexpected and self-induced. He overcame his first obstacle early in his childhood when he didn’t let his learning disorder stop him from becoming an artist. Later in his career, doctors told him his career was finished, but Chuck found a way to continue painting without full use of his body. In this CCSS lesson students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

Panchito, a young migrant worker, lives life with his family on the circuit—a cycle of seasonal crop harvesting. Each move on the circuit is signaled by the appearance of cardboard boxes, which hold all the family’s possessions. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

In this CCSS lesson students will explore citizenship and government in Athens through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

After their car crashes in a blizzard and their parents are injured, Danielle and Jake must climb to a weather station near the top of a mountain to get help for themselves and their family. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.