Tools for Schools
Book Creator
Build beautiful books in whatever style you'd like with an intuitive and adaptable app for constructing books. Kids can add images, drawings, text, and audio to make books about any subject. When complete, learners can wrap up the...
Curated OER
A Primary Source Picture Book
Travel through Europe with ten-year-old Teddy Roosevelt in this writing activity, which uses the picture book My Tour of Europe: by Teddy Roosevelt, by Ellen Jackson. After reading the book, readers compare it to passages from The...
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Rudyard Kipling's Rikki-Tikki-Tavi: Mixing Words and Pictures
Create meaningful illustrations to accompany stories in a web-based art and literacy instructional activity focused on "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" by Rudyard Kipling. The class takes a virtual art safari with the Museum of Modern Art and then...
Curated OER
Picture This!
Students explore and generate story elements for wordless picture books. For this collaborative writing lesson, students review wordless picture books and write a story based on the illustrations. Students use post-it notes to organize...
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All About Me Books
Students examine literature of emergent readers, categorize books into types of literature common for primary readers (wordless, pattern, alphabet, number, rhyme, etc.), and write a book about themselves to give as gifts to their new...
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Exploring Owls
What can young scientists discover from dissecting an owl pellet? Explore the owl food chain, beginning with an introduction to these predatory birds. Suggested strategies here include creating a podcast and purchasing a poster, however...
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Picture This
Learners explore finding facts from the Internet to create a nonfiction story. In this writing lesson, students fill out KWL charts and do internet research about the given topic of spiders. Learners then create and illustrate their non...
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Dem Bones, Dem Bones are Going to Walk Around: The Human Body
Students explore human anatomy by creating a science book in class. In this skeletal structure instructional activity, students identify the different body systems such as muscular, nervous, skeletal, and digestive. Students create a...
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Write a Story
Elementary writers will create short stories with their classmates' help, publishing the books using computer programs. The first learner writes a sentence to start the story, and each classmate adds a sentence to the story. The original...
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The World Around Me
Combining visual and language arts, here is a resource that prompts middle schoolers to write stories based on pictures of their surroundings. They use digital cameras to take pictures of favorite areas in the school. Next, they choose...
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The Wind Blew
Learners look at a picture book and observe what the facial expressions show. In this character's feelings instructional activity, students write what they think the character might be saying on each page and the punctuation they use. ...
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Eoraptor Dinosaurs
Students gain knowledge about dinosaurs. In this Eoraptor dinosaur lesson, students read books about Eoraptors and draw pictures of Eoraptors. Students show what they have learned by writing a paragraph about what they have learned.
Scholastic
Narrative Writing
If you're looking to start a unit based around narrative writing, make sure to consider this resource while you're planning. This book covers five topics: writing personal narratives, writing narratives about others, writing narratives...
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Stories of Life in Canada
Students examine Canadian history through William Kurelek's artwork. In this art analysis lesson, students discuss the ideas expressed in the picture book A Prairie Boy's Winter and A Prairie Boy's Summer. Students view the film Kurelek,...
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Discovering Swahili
Learners investigate the African language of Swahili by translating vocabulary words. In this foreign language lesson, students write 26 English words that define Africa and utilize the Internet to translate them into Swahili. Learners...
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Writing to an Author
Provide your young readers with step-by-step directions for crafting a friendly letter to their favorite author. After drafting and revising their letter, class members illustrate a favorite scene in the book and mail their letters to...
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My Daily Routine
Foreign language learners work in pairs to translate the daily routine of celebrities or everyday people, presented in daily planner format, into English. They then illustrate and record their own daily routines in storyboard (film...
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Writing A Storybook
Students create a storybook using vocabulary from the topic "urban and rural life". They write about past events in a children's story. They present their story to the class at an author's tea.
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Cinderella Stories
Students read and compare Cinderella stories using a worksheet. They write and illustrate original tales with a twist.
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Best Part of Me
Students determine a positive physical feature of themselves. They participate in an online writer's workshop and write descriptive poem about their favorite feature. They create a display of poetry and pictures.
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Peace Calendar
Students discover ways to make the world a peaceful place. In this humanity lesson, students read the book Peace Begins with You by Katerine Sholes, then discuss how they can have a peaceful impact on their society. Students mark off...
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Expressions of Frequency
Students practice discussing timely manners in a target language. In this foreign language lesson, students discuss words that represent frequency such as never or often. Students create a timeline illustrating how often they perform...
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A Fish Research Report
Young scholars select a species of fish and research facts about this species. They illustrate the written report with a picture of their chosen fish. The illustration may be labeled with body parts and background typical of the fish...
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To Create Your Own Comics With Stick
In this writing worksheet set, students follow the directions and use the varied comic book page templates to write an original comic book. They model their comics after the character, "Stink."