Students explore the Passageways website. They read to compare and contrast the motivations and accomplishments of two explorers.

Students look at three different versions of the Cinderella story. In this comparative literature lesson, students read the Chinese version "Yeh-Shen", the Egyptian version "Rhodopis," and the Native American version "The Hidden One" of...

Sixth graders respond to poetry. In this poetry lesson plan, 6th graders read the "Mother to Son" by Langston Hughes and they are split into 3 groups for below, at and above grade level. Each group has a different activity to show...

Students explore the art of storytelling and stories from various cultures. Students experience Japanese and Chinese culture as well as Greek mythology. Students create and present their own Greek mythology topic to the class.

Students examine the lives of three people from New Haven, Connecticut who have careers in law, politics and entertainment. In groups or individually, they read excerpts of information about the three people and what contributions they...

Is it crazy to fall in love with your own work, or is that the purest love of all? Compare two renditions of the classic Greek myth Pygmalion and Galatea with a literary analysis exercise. After students compare the similarities and...

Celebrate Black History Month with this lesson, in which middle schoolers create an essay about a famous African-American. Writers conduct research online, take notes to write an essay in proper format, and use ideas, text, and graphics...

Here’s a fresh approach to establishing classroom rules at the beginning of the school year. Class groups brainstorm what they know about rules for baseball, basketball, and football. They then consider how the games would differ without...

Young readers examine the details in an 1821 painting by Jacques-Louis David depicting two sisters who are exiled princesses. They read a tale about the Brothers Grimm, who were writing fairy tales during the same time period that these...

Hook your learners with a great project. They research the underground railroad and civil rights movement through literature, view the video The Underground Railroad: Escape from Slavery, and read the book House of Dies Drear in...

Middle schoolers work with a partner to gather information on a question from two sources using a computer program and the Internet. They also write a report with visuals to air on closed-circuit TV for the school. Use this instructional...

Drafting, revising, and editing is all apart of the publishing process. Using a series of documents as inspiration, young journalists compose a class Newspaper. They work independently and in groups to publish their own articles.

Building on the previous activity in this series of lesson seeds, this plan focuses on the use of dialect in Theodore Taylor's novel, The Cay. Class members examine specific lines of text, use their reading journals to respond to the...

Combine participial phrases and creative writing with this lesson, which is equally helpful for writing skills and conventions. After a mini-lesson on participial phrases and reading the picture book Dancing in the Wings, pupils use a...

"What a beautiful noise comin' up from the street; got a beautiful sound, it's got a beautiful beat..." Use Neil Diamond's "Beautiful Noise" to guide your class through a Six Trait writing activity, in which they write an original poem...

Start by introducing your class to basic comma rules, and then give them this practice sheet. First, learners add commas where necessary, and then they write down which comma rule (or rules) used in each sentence. Great practice!

Thomas Jefferson lived a controversial life. A series of lesson plans shares information about Jefferson's Sons, a novel about the infamous founding father. Discussion questions and other tasks explore different points of view and cover...

Look back at the third chapter of The Cay with your class. Pupils will conduct a close reading, taking a second look at a chunk of text and responding to a series of text-dependent questions. Wrap up with an analytical writing prompt...

Building upon prior lessons in the series, this reading and writing exercise requires pupils to look back at their own writing, track character development in the novel The Cay, and analyze how Phillip has changed. The reading focus is...

Schools in the 1950s and 60s looked very different from the schools we know today. An educator's guide explores the civil rights movement and, specifically, the process of integrating schools. Questions cover key themes in the novel and...

Explore ancient warfare through a dramatic reading of select portions of The Iliad with your class. They will identify the major characters in The Iliad and explain the strategies, external forces, and alliances of the Trojan War

Review the narrative writing process with your emerging story writers. They read a sample narrative and identify five vague verbs that could be replaced with a more exact, exciting verb. Then they write a personal narrative making sure...

Here is lesson plan 5 from a 7 lesson plan unit on using blogging to create a community of writers. The aim of this lesson plan is to get students writing about what Archaeologists do and how they use material data to study the past....

Have your class participate in an interview activity using an informational text about the Amazon. After reading a Cultural Connections story about a person from the Amazon, middle schoolers write interview questions based on the text....