Similes and metaphors make writing more beautiful and detailed, but can be a little harder to decipher during a first reading. Use a passage from The Man Who Loved Words to show young readers how to think through passages that...

Build an interest and appreciation for architecture in your young learners with this fun 10-lesson art unit. Engaging children in using their five senses, the class first observes the environment around them, paying...

Can three works of literature work together to establish and develop a common central idea? Put your thoughts into writing with a final assessment focused on a unit-long analysis of Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepard to His...

Anansi is a tricky character, but can he realize he's wrong and write an apology letter? Learners use Anansi and the Pot of Beans to practice writing, art, and figurative language. A series of activities are engaging for both...

Benjamin Franklin's famous aphorisms are a perfect time capsule of colonist values in the mid-18th century, as well as a clever reminder of the way life still works today. Middle and high schoolers select one aphorism to interpret...

The Odyssey is the core text in this unit study of the hero's journey motif. Along the way, kids research Greek and Roman history, mythology, art, and epic poetry. The 104-page packet is perfect for homeschool or classroom situations and...

Practice alliteration with a fun game! Kids match names to a best friend's name, and add something they both like. 

Take the first steps to reading fluency with a set of language arts activities. Kids work on the sight words pretty, ran, so, and out with tracing worksheets and matching games.

Metaphors are word pictures, creating images in our brains that draw readers to consider how two seemingly unrelated items are alike. Poems by Langston Hughes, Margaret Atwood, and Naomi Shihad Nye provide learners with an opportunity to...

Shadow puppetry has an ancient past, it is also a great way to build oral expression and reading fluency. Young thespians research folk tales, compare and contrast reality and fantasy, then create and perform a shadow puppet play based...

"Who says a pen has to be called a pen? Why not call it a frindle?" Inspired by this quote from the award-winning novel written by Andrew Celements, this lesson allows children to invent their own...

Draw back the curtain, add a spot of joy to your class, and let learners be lessoned by a close reading exercise that models how to develop an interpretation based on evidence drawn from a text. Robert Browning’s dramatic monologue “My...

Take a trip all around the town! Kids go round and round with a fun set of lessons based on "The Wheels on the Bus." After singing the song together, little learners figure out the hand gestures, reenact the song, and read an...

Sometimes it can be hard to express emotions. Help little learners figure out what makes them happy, angry, sad, or scared with a lesson that focuses on feelings. It includes singing, drawing, matching flashcards, and more. 

Imagine a project that informs and entertains. Replace book reports with a bulletin board that highlights all the important elements of a novel. Readers research the author, create a timeline of events in the story, write a...

Delve into Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan with close reading and evidence-based, text-dependent questions. Part of a unit series, this well-sequenced, Common Core designed instructional activity draws on material from the...

Engage young readers in using context clues with this collaborative vocabulary activity. In pairs, children draw from a deck of cards, with each card asking a question about a context involving a specific vocabulary word. After...

What do spiders' legs and an octopus's eyeball have to do with metaphors? The fourth lesson in an 11-part unit designed to accompany The Twits by Roald Dahl uses disgusting foods to teach about metaphoric writing.

Create baseball cards for literary characters with this lesson plan. It introduces students to baseball cards, their components (stats, picture, etc.), and prompts them to draft and publish their own cards based on figures from...

If you want some help with teaching themes and symbols in Animal Farm, this may be beneficial. After a class discussion about possible themes, class members write a paragraph explaining which they believe is the most important. Next,...

Do the places you have lived influence what you write? Class members research the lives of writers and look for how places these writers have lived might have influenced their writings. 

Expose young children to the wonderful works of author and illustrator Jan Brett using a few of her stories such as Armadillo Rodeo, The Mitten, or Daisy Comes Home through a unit study. 

True friends stick together. In the case of The Wind In The Willows, the friends just happen to be a toad, mole, rat, and badger who team up to beat the weasels. The resource covers the first chapter of their raucous adventures. Scholars...

Help your pupils discover the power of context clues by teaching the this vocabulary strategy. Designed to go with words from Willa Cather's My Antonia, this exercise focuses on having individuals use their own words to define new...