Strengthen the bonds of friendship within your class with a reading of E.B. White's award-winning novel, Charlotte's Web. Focusing on the unique characters in the story and the relationships they develop, young readers draw...

Grow vocabulary skills with an understanding of affixes and word roots. Included here are a few activities and plenty of materials you can use to support your learners as the focus on building vocabulary.

What will you do when you grow up? What are you going to do after school is over? Learn about future time clauses and how they connect to independent clauses with a helpful grammar presentation.

Encourage close reading for young learners with a lesson based on Natalie Babbitt's Tuck Everlasting. The first part of the resource guides readers through a Directed Reading Thinking Activity (DRTA), prompting them to make...

With the help of six graphic organizers, writers share their opinion on a bad habit, the greatest city, a desirable pet, a recommended book, and the importance of education. Using their supporting reasons and facts, pupils...

A brief introductory presentation illustrates many images from Gary Paulsen's Hatchet. From berries to black bears, young readers take a quick trip through Alaska during a class reading unit.

Before reading Chapter Six, "The Platinum-Blond Man" in Matilda, readers preview the illustration of Mrs. Wormwood dropping her plate of food, and think about what may have happened to cause the scene. After reading the chapter, class...

Learners practice using can for ability in a conversational skills worksheet. As students move around the classroom and practice the grammar exercise, they become more familiar with the peers in their class.

You've got your topic—now how do you make your poem funny? Explore ways to make a poem humorous, including puns, exaggeration, silly words, and surprising endings, with a helpful poetry lesson.

Does pajamas rhyme with llamas to you? If it does (and even if it doesn't), an online lesson on rewording poetry for regional pronunciation may be helpful for you and your students.

Leave it to the experts. Scholars work in expert groups to analyze new myths. Each group is assigned to become an expert on either The Fates, The Story of Medusa and Athena, or Theseus and the Minotaur. They answer questions and...

Why is reading important? As part of the mid-unit assessment, scholars read, summarize, and analyze an article about the importance of reading. Additionally, they continue their discussion about whether their rules to live by should be a...

Let's take the big W. Scholars analyze the model newspaper article Sandy wreaks havoc across Northeast; at least 11 dead and look to answer who, what, when, where, and why. They work in groups of three to complete a Five W’s web...

True or false? Scholars read chapter four of World without Fish and explore the idea of a myth. They discuss in triads the meaning of the myth of nature’s bounty. Learners annotate the text on sticky notes and then answer...

Pesticides—unnecessary pollutants or positive application? Learners watch a video about DDT and read Rachel Carson: Sounding the Alarm on Pollution for their mid-unit assessment. They complete graphic organizers, answer multiple-choice...

We're off to see the wizard! Practice making inferences in literature with two sample paragraphs from L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Each passage provides questions about the pleasantness of the place it describes, and...

When is a preposition not a preposition? Learn about the role prepositions play in a slideshow presentation about phrasal verbs. As the class watches the presentation, they reinforce their skills with practice activities.

Story chains connect literary concepts, reinforce context clues, and even help learners predict what's coming next! Using words from the next chapter of Sharon Creech's Walk Two Moons, middle schoolers craft story chains to...

Of all the amendments found in The Bill of Rights, the First Amendment contains some of the most important freedoms for American citizens. A unit plan on the First Amendment features interactive lesson plans designed to teach about those...

Students answer the question,"To go West or not to go West?". In this nonfiction instructional activity students read a piece of nonfiction about going West during the 18th century. Students use a graphic organizer to compare and...

Even if you've never picked up a musical instrument, chances are that music has directly impacted your mental and emotional development. Sixth graders engage in a reading activity in which they read two articles on the impact of music on...

Help your class find their writing voices with this lesson which uses the work of Ralph Fletcher to guide a "Prompt in Reverse" activity. Using the chapter "First Pen" from Fletcher's Marshfield Dreams, learners decipher what they...

Discuss the importance of a lead in writing with your upper graders. They examine several examples of leads from literature and practice writing leads for pieces of artwork. They then select a topic from a list and write an introductory...

Work on narrative writing with this lesson plan, in which middle schoolers analyze the characters from a selected piece of literature and write narrative diary pieces as the character. They work to understand the point of view of the...