Improve class understanding of colonial times by reading an informational text and filling out the accompanying graphic organizer. Class members work with a partner to read, take notes, make inferences, and synthesize information.The...

What was life like in colonial America? Follow this lesson and your pupils will find out what people in colonial times did for work and for fun. Ask learners to compare and contrast the two texts and explain what the reading helped them...

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...

From large to small, show your class how to organize them all! Included within the guide is everything you need to take their knowledge of classification from the cellular to the species level. The worksheets focus on...

Begin class with a short comprehension quiz and review and then move into a new genre: two-voice poems. The activity provides information about this type of poetry as well as a video example made by eighth graders that you can show your...

As a summative assessment for this unit on colonial trade, fourth graders listen to and read informational texts in order to demonstrate their ability to take notes, write summaries, and draw connections. Young scholars first listen as...

Should countries use their militaries to stop humanitarian crises in other countries? Learners make claims, organize their reasoning, and provide evidence for their arguments with this rich resource.

Start off your day with a quick reading comprehension quiz about chapter three of Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan. After they complete the quiz, pupils participate in a discussion and look closely at the text. A strong Common Core...

Organize the characters in Jane Yolen's The Devil's Arithmetic according to their shared character traits. After listing character traits as a class, kids note which characters exhibit particular characteristics with a...

Acquaint your class with informational text through a close reading. First, examine a couple of pages together, looking at text features and content. The whole class focuses on marking down a brief summary of each paragraph before...

In many places in the world, people go to great lengths to get books to read. This beginning-of-the-year activity uses pictures of people reading in extraordinary situations to stimulate effective listening and speaking using the...

Informative writing is emphasized in the standards. Help your learners reach that goal with the plan for paragraph writing outlined here. After reviewing the work from the day before and adding to their vocabulary notebooks, class...

Remind young historians that many technological advancements influenced the events of World War I. After analyzing technology's evolution through primary sources, discussing the changes over time, and watching various video clips,...

Writing a paragraph from details found directly in a text is the central focus of this thorough and explicit lesson plan. Using the stories Nasreen's Secret School and Rain School, third graders are lead step-by-step...

The seventh lesson plan in this unit on colonial trade assesses fourth graders' ability to use details from an informational text to make inferences and create a piece of informative writing. The included assessment begins with learners...

The toss of a die determines what questions your pupils will answer in this lesson. Learners respond to questions based on Bloom's taxonomy, discussing The Adventures of Tom Sawyer with classmates along the way. They finish by writing up...

Allow your class to figure out what they will be studying through an inquiry-based anticipatory set that involves analysis of mystery documents and practice with making inferences. The lesson plan document includes a detailed description...

A carefully crafted three-day instructional activity integrates poetry and visual art. By analyzing and comparing Langston Hughes' poem "Mother and Son" and Romare Bearden's collage "The Dove," readers explore the theme of hope. The...

Young readers travel back to the time of the dinosaurs in this literature unit based on the story Dinosaurs Before Dark. Intended for use with upper-elementary special education students, this resource provides reading...

Focus on plot and the impact-specific events in The Cay. Class members use their double-entry journals, created in a previous lesson in this series, to record their thinking about the guiding question as they read chapters 15 through 17....

The power of a picture. During the events surrounding World War I, propaganda posters were widely distributed in American society to sway the emotions of its citizens. By analyzing World War I propaganda posters in the first installment...

Visit the Magic Treehouse and take your class on a trip through time with a reading of the children's book Mummies in the Morning. Using the story to spark an investigation into Egyptian culture, this literature unit engages...