Engage families in at-home practice using this 100-page worksheet packet for elementary school English Language Arts practice. Each worksheet briefly explains the objective to parents so they can guide their child through the activity....

Explore African literature and artwork in a multicultural literacy and art lesson. Begin with a read aloud of Tiger and the Big Wind: A Tale from Africa, and afterward, have kids retell the main events in the story. They identify and...

How did the ancient people of Egypt preserve their dead so well that their bodies are still recognizable today? Learn the painstakingly complex process they used for preservation. Young scholars read and summarize a narrative detailing...

Here are two great lessons that work together and are inspired by the Stephen Sondheim musical Into the Woods. Young writers and actors will retell the story of "The Frog Prince" through games, improvisational script writing, and song....

Young scholars explore Cherokee legends. They read The First Strawberries by Joseph Bruchac, and then do several activities to help comprehension. They discuss the book and answer comprehension questions. In addition, they retell the...

Elementary and middle schoolers participate in a demonstration of the heat and humidity of the Manu rainforest environment. They watch and discuss a video, calculate the humidity and temperature in the humidified tent, and write a...

Dress up to catch the class's attention before reading a silly story aloud. Learners identify five sensory details within the story and interpret two metaphors. They then collaborate on sequencing events before retelling the story using...

Have your class talk about the importance of the rainforest and the products that come from it. Learners watch a video showing the path of chocolate from the rainforest to the supermarket. They discuss how the rainforest and chocolate...

Examine the movement of characters in the story, Caps for Sale. Using the text, pupils invent gestures and movements for some of the actions and major events. They practice retelling a story by using the movements they developed. They...

Kindergartners sequence the parts of a story using a snow globe as a setting. They will listen to Snow Globe Family and retell the parts of the story noting the beginning, the middle, and the end. Then they will make their own snow...

Thirteen activities work alongside a narrative text of your choice. With reading comprehension at its focus, readers complete worksheets covering character descriptions, similarities, and differences between characters, the sequence of...

Reinforce reading comprehension and story mapping skills with the help from a story, Gingerbread Baby by Jen Brett. Individuals discover new vocabulary, make predictions, retell main events, respond to reading using a graphic organizer,...

Take your guided reading lesson plans to the next level with a collection of printables, templates, and reference tools equipped to support the reading needs of your readers. Included is a detailed information page, grouping sheet,...

How can you tell if a number of items is reasonable? Combine math and language arts with a fun lesson based on Jeff Shepard's The Right Number of Elephants. After reading the book, kids discuss amounts of other items and create minibooks...

Ensure that your kids don't even consider saying "Not me!" when it comes time to read by engaging them in this set of lesson plans based around "The Little Red Hen." The class reads the story together before starting in on additional...

Empower your readers by modeling for them the steps for retelling a story. Designed as a teacher resource, Dr. Cummins argues that shifting responsibility for retelling to the learners increases their comprehension. The procedure is...

Practice the strategy of summarizing to gain meaning and knowledge from an informational text. Young readers highlight supporting details and main ideas, and then they use this to summarize two articles: "The Great Quake" and "What is an...

Who is Mo Willems? Explore the author with your class. Learners read books written by Willems, compare and contrast the characters therein, and make predictions about what will happen. Finish off this author study by having small groups...

What does a philanthropist do? Help your class explore philanthropy using character development and literacy ideas. Learners will define and give examples of philanthropy, listen to The Lion and the Mouse, discuss how the characters help...

Through direct instruction, the teacher demonstrates how to identify the main idea and supporting details of a text when creating a summary. As a class, read a paragraph, highlighting relevant information and crossing out extraneous...

Learners research the western movement in order to learn note taking strategies with nonfiction texts. They use the Internet to search for important information about the western movement using the Cornell Notes note-taking system. They...

Need a fun way to retell a great story? Here are song lyrics that retell the Tomi De Palo classic, Strega Nona. There are two songs, the first tells the story of Strega Nona (sung to the tune of "Are You Sleeping?") and the second warns...

Oh, that naughty Peter Rabbit! Youngsters read an excerpt aloud from the classic Beatrix Potter story "The Tale of Peter Rabbit." They retell the story in their own words and discuss the events. Readers make inferences about various...