"Now is the summer of our happiness/Made winter by this sudden, fierce attack!" Luke Skywalker meets Hamlet in a 10-lesson unit based on Ian Doescher's William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, a New Hope. Using Star Wars® as source...

Making inferences and drawing conclusions is a key component to successful active reading. Encourage your class to use context clues and prior knowledge to infer different elements of a story, including the setting, plot, and character...

The Core Knowledge Foundation offers this teacher guide to Robert Louis Stevenson's gothic novel about the duality of humankind. The 128-page guide includes a unit introduction, unit calendar, nine scripted lesson plans, assessments with...

They Call Me Güero: A Border Kid's Poems by David Bowles is the focus of a five-week language arts unit unit. Fifth graders listen to various poems and participate in thoughtful discussions, examining vocabulary and learning new words in...

A unit focuses on second-grade skills, specifically spelling, grammar, writing, and reading. Over six weeks, scholars review spelling patterns and tricky words, and explore verb tenses, adjectives, subjects, and predicates. They write...

The last unit in the series by Core Knowledge focuses on alternative spellings, nouns, verbs, conjunctions, subject-verb agreement, using commas in a series, constructing sentences, and following the writing process while writing...

How often do you ride a bike? Time frequency words are featured in a lesson designed for ESL/ELD classrooms. 

What's the difference between being a phony and being a conformist? At what point does conforming to alleviate loneliness lead to insincerity? These are the questions at the heart of this unit plan that uses The Catcher in the Rye...

Study skills, time management skills, and test taking-skills are important attributes for both the classroom and the real world. Focus on these learning skills in a lesson that reviews how to be a good student and make better grades.

Get your class outside to observe their surroundings with a lesson highlighting weather patterns and seasonal changes. First, learners take a weather walk to survey how the weather affects animals, people, plants, and trees during...

This activities in this packet, the second in the series of support materials for the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt thematic units on animal habitats, are designed specifically for English language learners.

After completing an online activity about the Mayflower, scholars draw a picture about what they know of the Thanksgiving holiday, including a one-sentence summary. A reading of If You Were at the First Thanksgiving by Anne Kamma is...

Poetry or prose? That is the question facing middle schoolers as they begin a month-long poetry unit by examining the characteristics that differentiate poetry and prose writing. Pupils learn about poetic devices and different types of...

Begin each day with a warm-up that has ELLs focusing their minds on a skill that will be taught that day. Focusing on verbs, each daily lesson reinforces study and self-management skills, helps learners become proficient in working with...

Wouldn't it be great to have a device that would stop time for everyone else but would let you catch up? Alas, there is not such a device yet. However, there is a way to make every minute count. That's the big idea in a lesson about time...

Give your pupils a front row seat at the biggest light show in the sky this year! In addition to admiring the total solar eclipse, young astronomers can explain the phenomenon with a little help from an inquiry-based lesson. The focus of...

As part of a celebration of Chinese New Year, class members research the Chinese zodiac and examine the description of the personality attributes associated with the animal of their birth year. Individuals then craft a persuasive essay...

The final instructional activity in a skill-based series focuses on setting goals and making checklists. Class members discuss what it means to set realistic goals and practice making lists to manage their time effectively.

Seventh graders have a golden opportunity to learn how to read poems and short stories with a unit that introduces them to the techniques writers use to craft their works. They examine poems by William Carlos Williams and Edgar Allen Poe...

Plan ahead! Integrate science and language arts! Schedule your reading of C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe to coincide with the arrival of spring. As pupils read Chapter 11 of the Lewis classic, they are assigned one of...

Sing a song about friends and practice basic greetings! This is a good introductory lesson for young learners. First, as a class, review how to introduce yourself. Then, in small pairs, each learner introduces him or herself. Then...

The poems of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson are the focus of a unit that asks readers to consider how an artist's life and changes in society influences his or her work. After careful study of Whitman's and Dickinson's perspectives on...