West Side Story and Romeo & Juliet—two classics in their own rights that help young literature lovers better analyze different works. Learners research and compare the characters and story elements of West Side Story and Romeo...

Natasha Wing's story The Night Before Thanksgiving is a great way to incorporate rhyme and literature into the Thanksgiving season. Learners make text-to-self connections, recall main events, and choose post-reading activities...

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...

Readers' theater is a fun way to get kids reading with expression and improve their fluency! There is a full script here for The Three Bears with five characters to assign.

As you work through Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, try out some or all of the 20 questions and activities included here. Useful for discussion questions, group assignments, or individual projects, this resource covers plot as...

Students, using the Internet, communicate with peers around the world about winter-themed books. They study authors, write book reviews, re-write endings, interview book characters, create scene dioramas, paint murals, and write...

Find five activities all about longitude and latitude! Use oranges to show the equator and prime meridian, plot birthdays on a map using coordinates, and plan a dream vacation.

Historical fiction can be a valuable asset when learning about the past. Integrate several novels written about the Civil War into your social studies unit, with groups of four working collaboratively to comprehend the novel from...

George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, published in 1949, can seem strangely prophetic when compared to modern news events and politics. Readers of Orwell's dystopian classic sharpen their critical thinking skills by engaging in...

It's no secret that children can be very opinionated, but rather than fight against this natural tendency, embrace it with this primary grade writing project. After a shared reading of a children's book about...

Prior to reading The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi, spark engagement, and step into the shoes of Charlotte Doyle through this guided imagery activity focusing on adventure and the emotions that may be felt along...

Accompany a reading of The Lorax by Dr. Seuss and Tell Me, Tree by Gail Gibbons with an activity packet designed to bring awareness to nature, specifically trees. Scholars take to the outside, draw lines to create trees reminiscent of...

Extend the exhilarating learning experience of Dr. Seuss with five activities designed to reinforce literacy skills—site word reading, dialogue writing, story mapping, and more! Featured stories include The Lorax,...

If you're looking to start a unit based around narrative writing, make sure to consider this resource while you're planning. This book covers five topics: writing personal narratives, writing narratives about others, writing...

While reading Arthur Miller's The Crucible, start or end each day with a journal activity. The project includes a list of prompts for each act of the play. Pupils choose a prompt every time they write and connect their own experiences to...

Teach young children that with a little perseverance and the help of a good friend, anything is possible. This two-part lesson series based on the book Giraffe's Can't Dance starts with a shared reading about Gerald and...

Enrich your study of Charlotte's Web by E.B. White with this useful resource. Included here are 22 discussion questions, 15 extension ideas, and 10 curriculum questions that cover characters, plot, farming, and much, much more.

Great literature discussions are a consequence of carefully crafted questions, interpretative questions that permit more than one response, and responses supported by specific evidence from the text. The discussion questions in a guide...

Finding and/or designing a menu of equally weighted synthesizing projects to end a unit can be a challenge. Simplify the task with this menu of individual and group projects meant to accompany a study of The Crucible. Presentations,...

In the novel, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan, Percy is faced with a major decision. After reading, chapter 19, discuss the decision-making process Percy took, what he decided to...

Connect Martin Luther King Jr's famous speech, "I Have a Dream," to The Cay by Theodore Taylor. Taylor refers to the speech in his dedication, which creates a natural segue into talking about the speech and how it relates to the novel....

This pre-reading activity will certainly make your class ponder. With five questions to reflect upon, get insight to the moral dilemma Percy faced in the novel Percy Jackson and the Olympians, The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan. 

Capture the engagement of young readers with this collection of activities based on Jane Yolen's book, Owl Moon. Following a shared reading of this children's story, the class explores the geography of the American Northeast,...

Create a cross-curricular learning experience around a shared reading of Cynthia Rylant's book Snow. From writing poetry and a singing a song about snow, to creating paper snowflakes and solving math story problems, this resource...