Prestwick House
The Grapes of Wrath
At over 450 pages, John Steinbeck's Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Grapes of Wrath can be a challenging choice for full-class, book circle, or independent reading. The activities in a 10-page sample The Grapes of Wrath...
Tell City Schools
The Cay
Support your instruction of The Cay by Theodore Taylor with this extensive unit of materials. Provided here are prereading activities, worksheets and discussion questions for the entire book, and reading quizzes that you can use to check...
Curated OER
Understanding Protagonists and Antagonists
How can you tell if a character is a villain? What about a hero? Work on literary analysis with an engaging language arts learning exercise. After completing an activity about the four types of conflict, learners fill out a character map...
Write Away!
Voices In the Park
Explore the impact a narrator's point of view has on a story with a reading of the children's book, Voices in the Park by Anthony Browne. Written in four different voices, the story is told and retold from different perspectives to...
Smithsonian Institution
Mary Henry: Journal/Diary Writing
A great way to connect social studies with language arts, a resource on Mary Henry's historical diary reinforces the concepts of primary and secondary sources. It comes with an easy-to-understand lesson plan, as well as the reference...
Roald Dahl
The Twits - The House, the Tree and the Monkey Cage
A house with no windows and a garden full of stinging nettles make the perfect home for Mr. and Mrs. Twit. The seventh lesson in an 11-part unit designed to accompany The Twits by Roald Dahl takes a closer look at the Twits' home...
Mr. Mansour
Mouse and the Motorcycle: Vocabulary 1
Beverly Cleary's The Mouse and the Motorcycle is full of adventure, friendship—and vocabulary! Review the meanings of words in context with a straightforward fill-in-the-blank worksheet.
EdHelper
George Washington's Socks by Elvira Woodruff
A solid, straightforward book report form is an excellent addition to your literature unit. Class members note the main characters, point of view, plot elements, and other important details from a story, adding their favorite part...
Curated OER
Vocabulary Development
Learners utilize various vocabulary strategies. They use vocabulary logs to record strategies they have been taught, such as the Frayer Model (definition, picture, examples, non-examples), writing their own definitions, and using...
Curated OER
The Kite Runner: Personality File
Readers of Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner assume the voice of one of the characters from the novel and draft eight reflective journal entries and a one-page collage that depicts the character's interests, personal beliefs, etc.
Curated OER
Total English Elementary: The Arts
In this vocabulary activity worksheet, students consolidate key vocabulary from a unit of study as they classify terms by unscrambling words and identifying 6 films based on the categories listed.
Curated OER
Descriptive Writing: Parrot in the Oven
After reading a selection from Victor Martinez's Parrot in the Oven, pupils use the graphic organizer to decipher the sensory details within the descriptive paragraph. They list various details under the appropriate sense ("see," "hear,"...
Curated OER
The Kite Runner: Cloze Procedure
A passage from Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner is the text for a cloze reading activity designed to determine the comprehension skills of class members. The resource includes the worksheet, an answer key, and step-by-step directions.
Maryland Department of Education
The Concept of Diversity in World Literature Lesson 6: Culture Clash
To prepare for a Quickwrite on the question, "How do different points of view create cultural conflicts?" class groups draw examples of religious, cultural, and political conflicts from Things Fall Apart and The Poisonwood Bible to use...
Curated OER
Heavy Boots: Group Discussion
Jonathan Safran Foer's phrase, "heavy boots," becomes the focus of a class discussion of grief and sadness. During the reading of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, individuals place examples of their own experiences with these topics...
Reed Novel Studies
Peter Pan: Novel Study
J.M. Barrie's classic book Peter Pan is about an adventurous boy who never gets old. Scholars read the first two chapters about Peter and three young friends. They then complete worksheets by filling in sentences with vocabulary...
Curated OER
Pride and Prejudice: KWHL
How much does your class know about the setting of Pride and Prejudice? Explore Jane Austen's romantic world with a KWHL chart that helps kids note what they already know about 18th century England, what they want to know, how they...
Curated OER
Speak: Questioning Strategy - ReQuest Strategy
The best way to analyze a piece of literature is to ask questions about the characters, plot, and theme. Encourage your learners to stump the teacher with the most difficult questions they can create using Bloom's Taxonomy and various...
Reed Novel Studies
Flora and Ulysses: Novel Study
As Flora from Flora and Ulysses drowns in her misery, she discovers a squirrel with bigger problems than her own. She saves him from the vacuum cleaner and finds out that his brush with death gave him superpowers. Scholars match...
Curated OER
Cold Sassy Tree: Vocabulary Development
Change places with your pupils, and let them teach their peers! Each learner signs up to teach a word from a list provided by the teacher (included here). Then, they complete a graphic organizer to help them develop a better...
Reed Novel Studies
The Little Prince: Novel Study
Do our eyes play tricks on us? The Little Prince narrator begins with a discussion of the difference in what grown-ups and children see. Scholars read how he puts this to the test using a drawing and find synonyms to vocabulary...
Reed Novel Studies
The Year of Billy Miller: Novel Study
Can you really knock the sense into someone? It seems that the bump on Billy's head changed his perspective on things in The Year of Billy Miller. Readers discover that after his injury, Billy appreciates his parents more and is nicer to...
Teach Engineering
Cell Membrane Experimental Design
Grandma said to gargle with salt water for a sore throat. Was she right? In the last part of the seven-part unit, lab groups design an experiment to test a cells reaction to salt solutions. The pupils conduct their experiment to answer...
Curated OER
Graphic Organizer for Vocabulary: Gary Paulsen's Canyons
Although the activity is designed for Gary Paulsen’s Canyons, these procedures could be used with any novel or vocabulary study. Readers select an unfamiliar word, record the sentence and chapter where the term is found, write two...