Students will be the definition of vocabulary experts as they use the skills they learn in this lesson to track, define, and ultimately master unfamiliar words.

The Check and Line method described in this lesson encourages awareness by requiring readers to place a light pencil check in the margin if they have understood the line of text, and a dash or line if they have not. At the end of the paragraph, students use the GMR method to go back, motivate their brains, and reread any text marked with a line. If they are still confused after rereading, they can turn to an outside source-a peer, a teacher, or a print or online resource. The end result is that students pay closer attention when reading, thus increasing their comprehension and retention of the text.

In this unit, students will collect images, articles, and other things they can use to create a graffiti wall about voting. They create a chart listing about what they know. They will explore the history of voting and voting rights and create a timeline of voting history.

In this lesson focused on Walt Whitman's poetry, students use "I Hear America Singing" as a model to write a poem about their own environment - in this case, their school.

In this lesson, the whole class analyzes a photograph and brainstorms words to describe the characters' senses and feelings. A "hot-seating" drama session follows where classmates interview each other, acting as characters in the photograph, and further exploring the characters' feelings. Students are introduced to the idea of using similes and then work in pairs to describe a character's experience. They then create a simply structured poem using their ideas and similes.

A series of lessons to introduce students to writing a mutigenre paper. Students will analyze and identify literary elements present in selected novels, work in collaborative groups and sythesize various genres to publish a multigenre webpage.

This lesson focuses on integrating the modern with the classic in a unit on The Odyssey. Students compare a modern character to the epic heroes of ancient Greece with several interactives and graphic organizers.

Creating Facebook-like presentations via Microsoft PowerPoint will engage and motivate students to learn about famous people of the American Revolution. To gain background knowledge prior to their study of the Revolutionary War, students will research people who played an important role during this time period. While sharing their research in their PowerPoint presentations, students provide written feedback.

In this lesson students will listen to examples of several dialects and discuss what they hear about each speaker from the recordings. As a class, students will also define dialect and use Alice Walker's novel the Color Purple to continue their analysis.

Using this student reproducible, from a ReadWriteThink lesson, students explain what friendship means to them by finishing a series of statements.

Students read various poems and explore why lines are broken where they are and how they affect rhythm, sound, meaning, and appearance in poetry.

In this lesson, the teacher reveals the first letter of the name, having students whose name start with that letter stand. More letters are revealed and students sit down as their name is ruled out. Once the helper is selected, students read the helper's name, count the letters in the name, clap the syllables, spell the name aloud, add the name to the word wall, and make observations about it. Using magnetic letters, students can create words that rhyme with the helper's name. Many additional ideas for playing with the letters of students' names are also presented here.

In this lesson, students use a Venn diagram to compare an e-mail with a traditional letter. They then work in small groups to identify the style and intended audience for sample letters and e-mails about forgotten homework. Finally, each student writes both an e-mail and a letter about the same topic. Each of the activities in this lesson are used to compare formal and informal uses of English.

In this lesson on the writings of Truman Capote, students focus on author's purpose in, In Cold Blood and A Christmas Memory. They compare the intended audience for the two pieces as a start to a discussion about the use of language to manipulate meaning.

In this lesson geared for ELL or regular education students, the students will develop an understanding of their own experiences from their native home and relate them to the text. This text helps trigger memories, as well as gives students appropritate examples of past tense uses. Students can explore the story further by researching the author before reading and sharing experiences in a similar format.

This lesson pairs Ernest Hemingway's "Cat in the Rain" with Raymond Carver's "Little Things" to guide students to an understanding of the characteristics of minimalist fiction. When asked to think about the reasons behind the popularity of minimalism, students begin to appreciate how literature develops and learn to see it as a reflection of the culture. Afterwards, students are tasked with comparing both works using a Venn diagram. Next, students read additional Carver stories to develop a list of characteristics for minimalist writing. Finally, students explore the roots of minimalism and write using characteristics of the style.

In this lesson, letter-sound correspondences are taught within a meaningful context in an explicit, systematic, and extensive manner. This lesson uses onset-rime analogy to present word families and spelling patterns. An onset is the consonant letter before the vowel in a given word or syllable, and a rime is the vowel and consonants that follow the vowel in a given word or syllable. Thus, in the word bill, the onset is the letter b and the rime is the letters ill. Furthermore, this lesson supports cooperative and integrative learning where students and teacher learn together and carry out tasks collaboratively.

In this lesson, literature and shared writing are used to teach letter-writing format and promote authentic letter writing. Students listen to and talk about stories dealing with correspondence before participating in a collaborative, whole-group letter-writing activity. They go on to write their own letters to deliver or mail to adult school helpers, family, or friends. Students often go on to write letters on their own time, which may generate ongoing correspondence.

In this lesson, students learn to identify written words with similar endings by singing and reciting nursery rhymes. Students begin by reciting Humpty Dumpty, identifying two words with similar ending sounds, and creating their own lists of words with the same ending sound. Students repeat this procedure with words from Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater and Jack and Jill. Finally, students access a website to identify the word families featured in other nursery rhymes and then create an illustration and text based on their favorite nursery rhyme.

This lesson provides a framework for introducing students to short-vowel word families. Focusing first on the a family, students work together and individually to learn the word families –at, –an, –ap, and –ack. Teacher modeling is used to introduce the word sort, inviting students to compare, contrast, and reflect on these four word families. Students then work with a partner to practice sorting and reading words with increased speed and accuracy. As their skills and confidence improve, students are asked to sort, read, and write words individually. These lessons can also be adapted to teach other short-vowel word families.