Teach your class about the Declaration of Independence while giving them practice working as a team. The resource breaks participants into groups and has them answer questions about specific grievances from the Declaration of...

Use the Visual Thesaurus to predict the subject matter of Rick Riordan's book The Lightning Thief. A pre-reading activity encourages middle schoolers to use context clues and word meaning to discover what the book is about. After...

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...

Read The Quicksand Book by Tomie dePaola while taking notes about the story.  Perform a read-aloud, and work your way through the text with your youngsters. With this plan, learners also write about ideas from a previous day, and...

You want your class to meet all of the Common Core standards, and here is one way to tackle the first speaking and listening standard. Given a theme to focus on from "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" by Leo Tolstoy, small groups come up...

Students study questions and answers within a text to learn about writing structure and organization. For this writing structure lesson, students investigate books in class by asking questions for the text. Students then format their own...

First graders use skills to collect, organize, and interpret data. They compare and contrast two stories, Make Way for Ducklings and Chibi: A True Story From Japan. Students create a duckling.

Students organize ways of reading expressively as well as fluently. They encounter books by Dr. Seuss within this lesson. Practice, practice and more practice makes perfect. Punctuation marks are reviewed for accuracy.

Students read Macbeth and work in groups to organize and create an outline for a persuasive essay. For this persuasive essay lesson, students work in tiered learning groups to organize their thoughts for a persuasive thesis about the...

Young scholars work to develop comprehension strategies. They focus on three rules for summarizing: getting rid of extra information, organizing, and finding the main idea. Through modeling and then guided practice, they apply these...

Primary readers complete the activities in a Pebbles, Sand and Silt FOSS kit. As a class, they are given a group of rocks and they are to categorize them based on their activities in the FOSS kit. They use this information and apply it...

Students observe paragraphs in newspaper articles and the chapters in their reading books writing down reasons for each new paragraph. They then discuss why writers organize their work into paragraphs.

Fifth graders reorganize comic strips to have them make sense, complete outline and organize their thoughts into outline form to explain directions, and use that outline to complete their own directions for geometry activities.

Fourth graders explore the human and animal connection along with the idea that death is a part of the life cycle. They read "Where the Red Fern Grows." Students examine the feelings and emotions surrounding death and they discover the...

Fourth graders summarize a piece of text. After reviewing the correct way to read in order to summarize, 4th graders independently read a selection of their choice. They write a summary paragraph using the graphic organizer outlined by...

Students discuss twin words. They examine the use of homophones and create cartoons to illustrate the homophones. Students play "Go Fish" using synonyms, antonyms, or homophones.

Students investigate science and technology by reading a children's book.  In this reading comprehension lesson, students read the story Archibald Frisby and discuss the ways we use science and technology in everyday life....

Students are introduced to and practice techniques and strategies to master the art of summarization. They read, discuss and summarize chapter 3 in "Catwings," by Ursula K. LeGuin. Steps to follow for summarizing is included within this...

Students discuss and develop graphic writing webs, writing supporting ideas for a given topic.

Students examine *5 a Day* Dole program to reinforce facts learned about nutrition.