With What Do You See at the Pond?, young readers explore pond life and practice reading strategies. Learners first make predictions and then read the simple story independently. After a second read-through with a partner, kids come...

Many developmentally disabled students struggle with accurately conveying messages and interpreting those of others around them, especially when they are non-verbal. This lesson contains fun activities and exercises, such as talking with...

Model for readers how to develop effective questions with a request strategy for questioning. Text-explicit, text-implicit, and experiential based questions are the focus. Step-by-step instructions are included for the strategy that...

Ah, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer! Before your class reads this classic novel, encourage them to activate prior knowledge and build interest in the book with the KWHL strategy. Directions for walking your class through this strategy are...

Explore emotions associated with moving to a new home with young learners. First they listen to the books Painted Words/Spoken Memories by Aliki and Going Home by Eve Bunting. Then they are invited to share their experiences as well as...

It's alive! Or is it? Through a series of shared readings, whole class activities, and independent exercises children explore the difference between living and non-living things, creating a pair of printable books...

How much does your class know about World War II? Before reading Art Spiegelman's Maus I, lead your class in creating a KWL chart. Knowing the background and setting of the novel are extremely important in understanding this survivor's...

Look around and explore. Little ones use their five senses with some day-to-day activities designed to guide observation and apply STEM strategies. Young scientists learn through comparing/contrasting and...

Spruce up a class reading of the children's book Joseph Had a Little Overcoat by Simms Taback with this fun series of activities. Starting with a list of reading comprehension questions and key vocabulary to address during a teacher...

Use the Total Physical Response (TPR) strategy to practice Spanish greetings as well as where and who question prompts. Comprised of five days, this short unit is taught completely in Spanish with call-and-response exercises,...

Your class has just begun reading Jacob Have I Loved, and they're coming upon the fifth chapter. Pause their reading and have them complete a KWHL chart (not included) to detail what they've learned from the novel's beginning. An example...

Get your class up and moving as they explore how to express movement and dance through words. Designed around two poems by Lillian Morrison about break dancing, the activity truly captures the creative and multi-sensory aspects of...

Explore how illustrations add to a story. Young learners will look at picture books to see how the pictures tell the story. They create illustrations to go with a chosen story, and then flip the activity so they have to write a story to...

The simple instructional techniques described in this plan will help young readers learn and practice basic reading skills and strategies. Before reading, introduce your readers to the meaning of main character, setting, and plot. Then...

Use the Caldecott Award-winning book Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey (which can be found on YouTube if you don't have it) to guide budding readers through vocabulary in context. Although the...

If you are reading Jane Yolen's fun story How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight?, use these strategies to enhance the experience for budding readers. What new words will they learn? Find detailed comprehension questions for these...

Readers are presented with a list of three questions and asked to actively listen to a story or article to answer them. They verbally answer the questions to learn the strategy. Next, read a story to them or have them silently read a...

This vocabulary-in-context strategy can be applied to any book that learners read with you; however the activity here is designed around Byron Byrton's fiction book, Airplane. First, introduce the new words you will learn: attendant,...

Engage and entertain young learners with this collection of readers theatre activities. With over 25 different scripts, a wide range of topics are covered from simple counting and rhyming exercises to adaptions of popular children's...

Thinking of assigning a research paper? Get writers off on the right foot with a lesson that introduces the BEAM research model. Writers brainstorm the background of their topic, explicate the aspects of their topic, consider the...