This resource provides a lesson designed to assist learners with essentially developing a backstory for many of the minor characters in the text David Copperfield.

In this 2 day lesson plan, students will work with Matt de la Pena's novel Ball Don't Lie, re-reading a passage and focusing on how the theme is developed through the character interaction.

In this lesson, students use timelines to help motivate them to read more nonfiction, which will, in turn, help increase their comprehension of nonfiction. Students begin with a discussion about timelines and their use to prepare for the research activity. Using a historical timeline and the students' prior knowledge of events, students predict when specific inventions were produced and take notes describing their reason for identifying that particular year.

In this lesson, students will begin by generating a list of homophones with which they are familiar. Students then listen to a song, identify homophones in the song, and discuss their meaning and spelling. Finally, student groups create a skit that depicts the meaning of a homophone. As the group performs the skit, their classmates attempt to guess the homophone that is on display.

Students read and respond to Billy Collins' poem "Introduction to Poetry." Students then write about a favorite poem and imagine the perfect way to read it.

This interactive resource may be used by students to analyze real individuals or fiction-based characters. The application includes appropriate space to add an image and specific descriptive details.

In this lesson, students explore Romeo and Juliet casually en route to a conversation about the relevance of such an old story to today's youth. Students learn some of the plot details of the play before writing their own creative dialogue about tragic romance.

In this unit, students begin by evaluating book reviews written and read aloud by other children. Next, students discuss the effectiveness of, what components are included in, what they learned from, and what they might change about the book reviews. Once students have a foundation for book review components and structure, they choose a favorite book and write a review. Finally, students publish their reviews by videotaping them or posting them online.

In this lesson, children's literature is used to provide students with an opportunity to explore the concept that all individuals have strengths, abilities, and talents. Through whole-class and small-group dialogue, students determine what each story means in the context of their classroom and themselves as individuals. Students also develop the necessary skills for cooperative learning.

In this lesson, inspired by the book 'It Begins with an A', this minilesson invites kindergartners to combine their experiences with familiar objects and descriptive writing by making a class book. First, during a reading of It Begins with an A, students discuss descriptive works, number words, size words, and other words that describe objects in the book. Next, students practice by giving three clues that describe familiar objects named by the teacher. Students are encouraged to develop more specific and descriptive clues. Then, each student thinks of an object and draws it on the back of a sheet of paper. On the front of the paper, they write three clues that describe the object. Finally, the completed pages are combined to create a book that can be shared with family members and peers before adding it to their classroom library.

In this lesson, students will participate in small group Collaborative Reasoning about issues of social justice and diversity. Students will read articles and answer questions that spur them to think critically about issues and discuss with others, using evidence and experiences to support their personal beliefs. Each group will create an online Persuasion Map to share whole class.

In this lesson, students will read the folk tale Jack and the Beanstalk and discuss the word giant and its beginning sound. Students then create their own lists of words that begin with the same sound. Then, students are introduced to words with the soft g sound and create a new list of words with this beginning sound. As a culminating activity, students work individually or in groups to categorize animal names into groups according to their beginning g sound.

In this lesson, students will study greeting cards to build motivation to read and write, practice reading fluency, and attend to print concepts. This experience allows students to study the crafting techniques authors use when they create greeting cards. After exploring various greeting cards, students have the opportunity to create greeting cards and share them with other students.

In this lesson, students work as a class to chart the use of the three elements of setting in the story, using specific words and examples from the text. Students then discuss the techniques that the book’s author used to develop the setting, making observations and drawing conclusions about how authors make the setting they write about vivid and believable. Next, students work in small groups to analyze the setting in another picture book, using an online graphic organizer. Finally, students apply what they have learned about how authors develop good settings to a piece of their own writing

In this lesson, the first session involves teacher modeling of the prediction strategy. The second is based on guided practice that allows the teacher and students to work together. The third session requires students to use prediction and document the results in response journals. Suggestions for transferring the strategy into later reading activities are included.

In this lesson, students will use their knowledge of letters and sounds to make an alphabet book that focuses on a specific letter. After the teacher models the given letter sound, each student, in turn, repeats the sound and names a word beginning with that letter sound. The teacher pronounces each word, encouraging students to tell the sounds they hear. The teacher writes the word on chart paper or the board, and then repeats these steps for each student. The sentence, "This is a _____.", is written on each page of the book. Each student draws the word they named beginning with the targeted letter and labels it on the line provided. The pages are then combined into a classroom book.

In this lesson, students begin by singing a song to the tune of "Mary Had a Little Lamb". Kindergartners can identify and learn letter names and beginning consonant sounds. First graders will enjoy extending the activity by creating new verses to the song as a class, thus building phonemic awareness and vocabulary. The activity culminates by illustrating the song verses.

In this lesson, students use previewing to activate their prior knowledge and set a purpose for reading. Using a strategy called THIEVES, which is an acronym for title, headings, introduction, every first sentence in a paragraph, visuals and vocabulary, end-of-chapter questions, and summary, students are guided through a preview of a nonfiction text. After guided practice, partners work together to use the strategy to preview a chapter from a textbook.

In this multi-session lesson, word webs are used to expose students to synonyms for common words, to help students choose synonyms that are appropriate for a given context, and to encourage students to use more descriptive words in their speech and writing. Student pairs then use words from the web in a skit they present to the class.

This lesson uses predictable text and a repetitive format to help students learn high-frequency words. Students develop fluency as they participate in a choral reading of the predictable text.