Before you begin reading Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan, read over this comprehensive handout that gives you a plethora of information regarding the story's summary, organizational structure, central...

Designed for teachers who use Tangerine in the classroom, this resource provides background information on the novel, issues raised by the story, and literary devices Bloor employs. A good addition to your curriculum library.

Considering including Juliet Marillier's young adult novel, Wildwood Dancing as part of your language arts curriculum? Check out an overview that examines some of the themes and issues presented by the novel. 

Fifth graders run a school newspaper on a school website and discover how to use various literary forms as they relate to the writing process. In this school newspaper lesson, 5th graders synthesize information from different sources,...

In this money worksheet, students solve 5 word problems where they are given an amount of money in written form and make a list to help organize the information in order to add the coin values. Students make change in 4 of the problems.

Have your middle schoolers choose a topic about the Oregon Trail to research for an informative report. They are given a list of report ideas and the components required when composing an informational report. Then, they choose one of...

Employ this resource to expand efficient ideas on how to present and organize activities that describe how researchers can implement their research by using direct quotes, paraphrasing, and summarizing—without plagiarizing. Activities...

Demonstrate how to cite information from Internet sources without plagiarizing. If your class is working on an Internet research paper, and you have observed learners cutting and pasting directly from the Internet, the activities and...

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...

Middle schoolers engage in the writing of a magazine article. They focus upon the reading of a children's fiction book and create an informative narrative. They create main ideas and supporting details for the article. The supporting of...

A visit to the local zoo launches an integrated life science/ language arts research project into the habitat, feeding habits, offspring, lifespan, and other interesting facts about animals. Each group selects two animals to photograph...

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

Analyze point of view and how it affects a literary work with this lesson. Middle schoolers create a written piece that focuses on point of view. They review the literary term "point of view," and explore examples of the term in text....

Bully, bullied, or bystander? Paul Langan's The Bully is the anchor text in a unit that examines bullying and violence. After a close reading of the text, readers imagine themselves as the characters and consider how they would react in...

A thorough lesson on persuasive writing takes middle schoolers through several activities, including group discussion, collaborative posters, and independent writing. They compare historical speeches and analyze the persuasive techniques...

Students create tables in a word processing program which helps them organize their text clues when reading a mystery story. They develop reading comprehension strategies while using a computer based graphic organizer in order to solve...

Students read excerpts from Annie Dillard's memoir, "An American Childhood," with the teacher. They experience opportunities to connect English, science, nature and art together from a new and unique perspective. This approach serves as...

Eleventh graders ponder about what it means to be an "American." They discuss the impact of an author's word choice and sentence structure on text. They identify some major themes and development of the Letters... Compose paragraphs and...

Seventh graders begin the instructional activity by reading primary sources about the country of Mali. Using maps drawn in the past, they discuss what they can gather about the country from the map and how it has changed over time. ...

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....

If you're looking to set your class up for writing effective arguments, try out this idea. While originally created with freedom as a guiding idea, the activity could easily be adapted for other themes. As a class, create a chart of...

How is that relevant? Scholars gain an understanding of the words relevant and compelling. They then go back to the End of Unit 1 Assessment Prompt: Adversity in the Middle Ages and look at the second bullet that pertains to relevant and...

A K-W-H-L chart is a great way to scaffold prior knowledge. As class members begin their reading of Out of the Dust, Karen Hesse’s 1998 Newbery Medal winning verse novel, they chart what they already know about the Great Depression...