Franklin R. Chang-Diaz is an immigrant from Costa Rica who began thinking about space at age seven when the Soviet Union launched the first satellite into space. After going through many obstacles he was accepted to NASA and became “the first Hispanic to be in the space program for the long run". In this CCSS lesson, students will explore his story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments; writing samples included.

A short instructional video on the Freedom Writers and how they use writing for personal expression and to fight prejudice.

The students will be lead through the writing process of writing a memoir based on real events in their own life.

Two female cousins spend their life doing everything together. One night they realize they are both in love with the Moon and wish to marry him. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

Students will use the Web 2.0 tool at glogster.com to create a book report, or the tool may be used to create a summary poster for a short story.

In this lesson, students use teacher feedback from their mid-unit assessment, as well as the NYS rubric, to identify their individual writing strengths and set goals for their own analytical writing.

In this lesson students finish their end of unit assessment by incorporating revisions from the previous lessons to create a final literary analysis.

This lesson is the end of unit 3 assessment. Students draft their newspaper article based on the carefully selected factual information and eyewitness quotes they gathered on their Newspaper Article Planning graphic organizer in previous lessons.

In this lesson, students have mini lessons on sentence structure and appropriate transitions to improve the flow of their article. Students then revise their newspaper articles inline with the content of the mini lessons.

In this lesson, students perform a peer critique. Then students write their final, best version of their article and they conclude this unit by sharing an excerpt of their article.

In this lesson, students begin the End of Unit 3 Assessment. To do so, they draft the written content of their informative consumer guide using their Quote Sandwich graphic organizers.

In this lesson, students have mini lessons on sentence structure and appropriate transitions to improve the flow of their informative consumer guides. Students then revise their guide drafts with this new knowledge in mind.

In this lesson, students write/create their final, best version of their guide including the visual images, charts, and graphs.

In this lesson, students continue working on their Informative Consumer Guide: The Issue of Overfishing and Fish Depletion.

This activity emphasizes the importance of teaching reading and writing strategies for students to use with informational text.

A majority of students in grades 4 to 6 are beyond decoding instruction and need more assistance with comprehension to help them become successful, independent readers. Strategic reading allows students to monitor their own thinking and make connections between texts and their own experiences. Based on the Guided Comprehension Model developed by Maureen McLaughlin and Mary Beth Allen, this lesson introduces students to the comprehension strategy of making connections. Students learn the three types of connections (text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-to-world) using a double-entry journal. They also learn about the life of Cesar Chavez and his work to promote civil rights.

In this recurring lesson, students use an anticipation guide to preview and make predictions about texts. The lesson begins with teacher-directed whole-group instruction in which students are introduced to the concept of previewing and guided in completing a prepared anticipation guide for Teammates by Peter Golenbock. Students are then given an opportunity to complete a portion of the anticipation guide independently. In the days that follow, students work in both teacher-guided and student-facilitated groups to extend their use of the previewing strategy with other texts. Finally, students discuss as a class how using anticipation guides helped them better understand the reading.

In this excerpt, thirteen-year-old Brian Robeson overcomes the initial hurdles of survival in the Canadian wilderness. As he wards off fears from his earlier encounter with a bear, Brian faces off with a porcupine in the dark of night. Realizing that self-pity would get him nowhere, Brian figures out how to use his hatchet and natural materials to start a fire. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments; writing samples included.

The hero's journey is an ancient story pattern that can be found in texts from thousands of years ago or in newly released Hollywood blockbusters. This interactive tool will provide students with background on the hero's journey and give them a chance to explore several of the journey's key elements. Students can use the tool to record examples from a hero's journey they have read or viewed or to plan out a hero's journey of their own.