In this online activity, students flip two chips to mix and match four word parts and make four words. Students then insert the four words into a paragraph, using context clues to determine where each word belongs. After each exercise, students can print their work to check whether they placed the four words in the paragraph correctly.

Adding one word at a time, students compile a list of words associated with a novel they have recently read, ranging from details about the plot to feelings about a character. Small groups of students then arrange the collected words into at least four categories using an online tool. Finally, students share their work by creating and presenting posters, which are discussed by the whole group. The discussion ranges from vocabulary and comprehension to literary analysis and reader response. Words from The Hobbit are used in the lesson as an example, but the lesson would work with any text students have read.

This resource provides a lesson designed to assist learners with improving their ability to make predictions about a given work by analyzing the first lines of a text. The lesson provides an interactive example and accompanying activity to assist students with acquiring this pre-reading skill.

In this multi-day lesson, students will play the role of "devil's advocate" in debating the potential reform of professional sports. Students will consider multiple perspectives as they annotate texts in preparation for a culminating debate activity in which they assume roles of several hypothetical stakeholders.

In this lesson, students compose found and parallel poems based on descriptive literary passages they have read. Students first select a passage and then pick out descriptive words, phrases and lines. They then arrange and format the excerpts to compose their own poems. Students create found poems (poems that are composed from words and phrases found in another text) as well as parallel poems (original poems that use the same line structures as another poem, but focus on a completely different topic.) This process of recasting the text they are reading in a different genre helps students become more insightful readers and develop creativity in thinking and writing. Since students are primarily identifying nouns and verbs for use in their poems, the lesson also provides a relevant opportunity for a grammar review of these two parts of speech.

This lesson-plan focuses on students analyzing, critiquing, and examining the language and meanings of historical and cultural documents such as The Pledge of Allegiance and the First Amendment. Through this activity they will also examine the impact and meaning of language, as well as the relevance of the meaning behind the words of each document. All handouts are downloadable and printable from this site.

Students are introduced to Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" by reading "The Butter Battle Book" by Dr. Seuss. After reading the picture book, students discuss the historical allusions as a class and identify its main satirical theme. Students then work in small groups to find additional background information and present it to the class. They chart details from the book and link each one to the historical information they have discovered. Students then repeat this process with "Gulliver's Travels," eventually discovering the overall message that the text communicates about society.

Getting children to use their imaginations when writing a story can sometimes be difficult. Drawing, however, can create a bridge between the ideas in a child's head and the blank piece of paper on the desk. In this lesson, students use factual information gathered from the Internet as the basis for creating a nonfiction story. Story elements, including setting, characters, problem, solution, and endings, are then used as a structure for assembling students' ideas into a fiction story.

In this lesson, students are introduced to signs and other familiar environmental print through books, a Website, or an online gallery. Students then bring in examples of environmental print and share them with their classmates. Once enough examples are collected, students sort them into categories such as food, traffic signs, etc., and create a book for each category.

This lesson is designed to accompany a reading of a text that has a film version. Students will create visions of a given text and compare them to the film version.

The graphic novel Persepolis is set in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. Most students are unaware of the changes associated with the events during that time, but the repercussions of the revolution are still being felt throughout the world. In this lesson, students work in small groups to research a specific topic related to Iran, using a WebQuest to focus their research on relevant and reliable information. After the research is complete, students present their information to the class through a technology-enhanced presentation.

In this lesson, The Jolly Postman is used as an authentic example to discuss letter writing as a genre. Students explore letters to the storybook characters delivered by The Jolly Postman. They then learn how to categorize their own examples of mail. The Jolly Postman uses well-known storybook characters, from fairy tales and nursery rhymes, as recipients of letters. This children's storybook is therefore ideal for using as a review of these genres of literature and as a means of helping children begin to explore rhyme and a variety of writing styles. Several pieces of literature appropriate for use with this lesson are suggested.

After this lesson students will be able to combine word choice and procedural writing; thus enhancing their overall writing skills.

Students create a poster to enter into a poster contest that educates others about issues surrounding bullying.

In this series of lessons, students read newspaper articles obtained from newspaper websites. Students then identify journalism's "5 Ws and 1 H" (who, what, when, where, why, and how) and complete a template with the corresponding information they have found in the article. Finally, students use their notes to write a 20-word summary called a GIST. Once students have mastered writing a GIST using newspaper articles, the strategy is then applied to content area texts to support comprehension and summarizing skills.

In this kindergarten activity, students listen to My Teacher's Secret Life, discuss the content, and make predictions about what the teacher and their peers do when they are away from school. After charting both student and teacher activities, the teacher models writing a book of his or her life outside school.

In this lesson, students observe the characteristics of effective small-group discussions through video examples of a "fishbowl" technique. In subsequent discussions, they are encouraged to interact with one another in a productive and respectful manner, with a focus on the value of exchanging meaningful compliments. Through targeted self-reflection, students set goals for improving their participation in productive discussions and take responsibility for monitoring their progress. Although this lesson is recommended for middle school students, it could also be used effectively with both younger and older students.

As background knowledge to Susan Pfeffer’s novels, The Dead and the Gone and Life as We Knew It, students research natural disasters for this lesson. In these two companion novels set in two different locations in the United States, the world’s environment has been changed because the moon has been pushed closer to the earth. This disturbance causes a series of natural disasters and epidemics. To fully understand the effects natural disasters have had on the world’s environment, each student researches a different natural disaster. Then they use these facts as well as safety tips in unique glogs, online interactive multimedia posters, that will include student-recorded weather announcements.

In this lesson, students will indicate personal preferences by voting on a novel for class study from a teacher-provided list, and then demonstrate understanding of the elements of fiction by creating a graffiti journal to guide their discussion. Students will work both individually and in cooperative groups and participate in whole-class discussion of the character development, plot line, themes, and symbolic structure developed in the novel. Assessment includes an individual essay on a topic related to their described literary element.

Students sometimes have difficulty recalling important events in their early lives to write about. This lesson works to resolve this challenge by having students brainstorm as a whole class, in order to benefit from collective recall as they define pivotal moments in their lives. Once items have been remembered, students focus on details of these events by choosing graphic symbols for these moments, people, and places, narrowing their lists to eight to ten items, and then ranking and graphing the items so that the overall connections and patterns are revealed. The graphic life map not only gives students specific events to write about but also includes a graphic for each memory that will help bring the events to life.