Curated OER
Designing a Crew Exploration Vehicle
Take your class on an out-of-this-world adventure with this fun engineering design activity. Working in small groups, young scientists design, build, and test crew exploration vehicles using some creativity, teamwork, and an assortment...
Crafting Freedom
Harriet Jabocs and Elizabeth Keckly: The Material and Emotional Realities of Childhood in Slavery
Through the journals written by Harriet Jacobs and Elizabeth Keckly, young readers gain insight into the lives of two enslaved children on nineteenth-century plantations.
ReadWriteThink
Literature Circles: Getting Started
Make reading more enjoyable and interactive with literature circles! Here you'll find detailed lessons to begin the literature circle process. Ten lessons introduce each role learners take on. Literature circle roles include...
Curated OER
Describer-Drawer Game
What's life with out a little fun and games now and then? This game helps kids practice many different skill sets. Child one takes a card then attempts to dictate how to draw the object to child two. Child two draws an object based on...
Curated OER
Northwest Coast Indians: Winter Celebrations Potlatch
Upper elementary learners engage in a study about the Potlatch as a Northwest Coast Indians social custom. Groups of pupils plan their own Potlatch ceremony; incorporating activities and creating gifts much like the ones that the Indians...
Curated OER
On Target: Strategies to Help Readers Make Meaning through Inferences
Here's a resource that explicitly teaches, models, and provides readers with opportunities to practice the process of drawing inferences from text. Packed with strategies elementary, middle, and high school teachers can use, the resource...
Curated OER
Lesson Plan 4: Creating Main Characters
Creating a good main character is a must when writing a creative narrative or novel. Elementary aged writers create main characters for the novel they are writing. They first use themselves as a models, then create a character as a...
Curated OER
Lesson Plan 5: Creating a Supporting Character
As a class, young writers learn how to develop a strong supporting character. They think and discuss a good friend they know, they use that friend as a basis for a potential supporting character. They create a supporting character as a...
Hawaiʻi State Department of Education
Poems That Dance
Combine the elements of dance with the actions in a poem. Learners review basic grammar, write an action-packed cinquain poem, and then choreograph a dance based on their cinquains. After the dances are done, they'll discuss the elements...
Hawaiʻi State Department of Education
Creating Narrative
Plot, setting, characters, and conflict are common to both drama and narrative stories. Kids create narrated tableaus that show their understanding of the plot, setting, and conflict of a story they've recently read. The activity...
Curated OER
Context Skills
Here is a fine lesson on teaching ways to use context clues. Upper graders split up into groups and use sticky notes to cover up five words in a passage of text. The passages are rotated to the other groups, and learners must use their...
Hawaiʻi State Department of Education
Text Connections
There are so many different ways to help learners make text-to-self connections. Here, fifth graders will create tableaus that show an event from a chapter in the class reader. They'll discuss why they chose that event to dramatize and...
English Worksheets Land
The Concert
Is it better to ask for permission or for forgiveness? Compare and contrast these choices with a reading comprehension activity, which focuses on a script about a girl asking each of her parents if she can attend a concert with her friend.
Curated OER
Dr. Seuss and Read Across America
What important facts about Dr. Seuss influenced the Read Across America movement...? This is the driving question of a research project that requires scholars to find information about Dr. Seuss' life and work. Class members write a...
Curated OER
Whale Song Acrostic
What do whales sing about? Invite your class to imagine the thoughts of whales before writing acrostic poems on the topic. The plan blends together a bit of life science with plenty of opportunities for creativity and writing.
Curated OER
Making Magical Creatures Talk
Invite your young writers to take the reins with writing dialogue. Using two characters of their own creation, kids work with partners and then individually to write short conversations.
Henry Ford Museum
You Can Be an Innovator ... Like Henry Ford
Why did Henry Ford want to invent a car for the masses? Why did Henry Ford locate his factory in Detroit? Why did Henry Ford encourage the idea of a 5-day work week? Young innovators find the answers to these and other question in a unit...
Recorded Books
Teacher's Guide: The Pinballs
Dive your class into the novel The Pinballs by Betsy Byars with the support of this reading guide. Including short answer questions, a multiple choice comprehension quiz, and extension activities, a variety of materials are provided for...
Curated OER
Persuasive Writing I
Examine the characteristics of an effective persuasive paper. In a group, eighth graders discuss the analogy of a debate being like a persuasive paper. After brainstorming topics, they write an argument and then debate it. Secretly, the...
Curated OER
Poetic Elements Are Fun!
Engage your class in the elements of poetry with a series of lessons and activities. The plans cover simile, metaphor, personification, onomatopoeia, alliteration, and imagery. Learners come up their their own metaphors, identify poetic...
Reed Novel Studies
War Horse: Novel Study
Some war heroes have four legs. War Horse tells of a courageous foal taken from his farm and sent into war. Joey, the foal, loves and touches the lives of many soldiers. However, his heart is still with his boy back on the farm. Scholars...
Reed Novel Studies
The Warden's Daughter: Novel Study
Many have said home sweet home. However, what if home is in a prison? Cammie, a young girl in The Warden's Daughter, lives in the prison where her father works—and that is not even the toughest part of her life. Scholars read about...
Reed Novel Studies
Walk Two Moons: Novel Study
Enjoy solving riddles? Perhaps Sal, a character in Walk Two Moons, is the only one capable of understanding a mysterious message left on her doorstep. On a road trip with her grandparent, Sal tries to make sense of the bizarre world...
University of Arizona
Yoruba Legends: Southern Nigeria
Explore legends and storytelling with your learners. After listening to some legends, pupils work collaboratively and then individually to come up with original legends about animals.