Does the fastest one always win the race? Look deeper into The Tortoise and the Hare with a set of discussion questions for before, during, and after reading the story.

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...

Kurt Vonnegut's short story "Harrison Bergeron" engages adolescents with its theme about the dangers of complete societal equality. Learners complete a graphic organizer to track literary elements in the story, as well as an inference...

Sometimes it's necessary to view the whole picture before making a judgment about a small part. Read a short story about five blind men who try to identify an elephant by feeling different parts and coming to their own conclusions....

Family and Friends is the theme of a unit offering extra support lessons. Follow each lesson plan's teach, blend, guided practice or practice/apply routine to reinforce concepts such as clusters, responding to reading, drawing...

Read about the fox family that decides to cook a hen for dinner. After reading, individuals answer questions about the elements of plot in the story. They require drawing conclusions, making predictions, and describing specific...

For kids who have already mastered the basic concepts in the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt thematic units on amazing animals, here's a packet of enrichment activities sure to provide food for fertile minds. 

Who says you need a human to be your valentine on Valentine's Day? Give your dog-loving readers an inspiring perspective on how a sister givdes her brother a valentine from the family dog. They then answer 10 questions thatd involve...

Learners read about Liza's first spelling bee before answering six reading comprehension questions. Skills include identifying similarities, making inferences, drawing conclusions, and answer questions based on explicit information in...

Invite your text detectives to bring their magnifying glasses to school to examine the clues in a text and make predictions. They write down three clues and a prediction on the graphic organizer.

I like algebra, but graphing is where I draw the line! Worksheet includes three multiple-part questions on interpreting and drawing line graphs. It focuses on the abstract where neither axis has numbers written in, though both are...

Read about why the osprey is also known as the fishhawk in a short reading passage that describes where they live, what they eat, and what they look like. After reading, individuals respond to four short answer questions based on...

Oral history has brought a multitude of lessons, stories, and factoids to our current knowledge of the past. Let us continue to use oral history traditions through a lesson that encourages pupils to discover and appreciate...

After reading any short informational or fictional text, ask your class to analyze the important events. They note down three important events on a short timeline, describing the events with either words or drawings. After this, pupils...

Enhance a reading of the Caldecott Medal-winning children's book Joseph had a Little Overcoat by Simms Taback with this collection of learning activities. Starting with general background information about the book and author,...

Inferencing is a necessary reading skill to uncover non-explicit messages in text. Use the set of resources as a way to guide learners toward becoming expert inferrers through reading prompts and literature with text and without text.

Ten drama lessons are the perfect addition to your language arts or theater class. With a focus on script elements, plot development, and parts of a dramatic story, the lessons guide young playwrights through the steps of telling a story...

Scholars take part in a grand conversation after they examine facts and stories about the Women's Suffrage Movement. Eight discussion questions bring light to influential women, the importance of voting, citizenship, and voting rights.

Learners study the decisions and solutions involved in winning the right to vote. After reading background information on the fight for women's suffrage, including one woman's story, and its eventual success in the United States and...

Is Phoebe a good friend to Sal or not? After reading chapters twenty-five and twenty-six of Walk Two Moons, class members use the provided graphic organizer to develop an argumentative piece. Writers must decide if the two...

Through the journey of four stories of immigration, scholars complete graphic organizers and apply knowledge to create a visual representation of their findings on a large poster. Third and fourth readers write a letter to their...

Model the effects of practice on texting speed. Pupils develop a linear equation that models the change in texting speed based on the amount of practice. The sixth performance task in an eight-part series requires learners to solve...

Use context to explain the importance of the key features of a graph. When context is introduced, the domain and range have meaning, which enhances understanding. Pupils use application questions to explore the key features of the graph...

Paired reading passages frequently appear on standardized exams, but finding text sets to use in the classroom is sometimes a challenge. A lesson plan on using paired texts includes a selection of passages and a graphic organizer for...