A guided imagery exercise is a great way to get readers thinking about writing. As part of their study of Out of the Dust, Karen Hesse’s 1998 Newbery Medal winning verse novel, class members listen to a reading of one of the poems...

Rhyming is fun, builds phonemic awareness, and is a tried and true pre-reading skill. This activity helps learners identify words that rhyme. Young scholars listen to a song, locate a rhyming word they hear by clapping then draw a...

Passages from Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart provide the text for a QAR: Question Answer Response comprehension activity. Readers respond to right there, think and search, on your own, and author and you questions.  ...

An activity tests the fluency skills of young readers. Scholars match initial sound cards to letter cards. Pairs take turns and work to locate the most matches before the timer goes off. The activity ends with a peer evaluation.

The interpretation of a poem often lies in the mind of its reader, especially when reading the tone. Focus on author's word choice, middle schoolers read four different poems and briefly state a perceived tone for each, along with the...

What's the difference between being a phony and being a conformist? At what point does conforming to alleviate loneliness lead to insincerity? These are the questions at the heart of this unit plan that uses The Catcher in the Rye...

This lesson is so beneficial it makes any teacher's heart skip a beat! After readers identify words from Words by Heart, they break down unknown vocabulary with a handout detailing various prefixes and suffixes. Once they finish...

Bring history to life through literature. The first in a series of three challenge activities designed to accompany Theme 5: One Land, Many Trails does just that through unique projects connected to historical fiction and nonfiction...

It's hard to imagine that life on Alcatraz could be dull. A series of intriguing lessons take readers through the novel Al Capone Does my Shirts. Pre-reading questions introduce the text and a range of suggestions, from comic strips to...

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter—are they good for society? Pupils prepare for a class debate in which they voice their opinions on the issue. They read the main pro and con arguments, explore others' opinions, view videos, and discover the...

In this music and speech worksheet, students find similarities between language and music. Students also tell about their own language. Students also may write the 7 music letters.

A reading of Robert Frost’s "The Road Not Taken" launches an interdisciplinary study of the connection between the meters of a poem and a melody. After identifying the number of beats in each line of the poem, young musicians use...

Combining art, music, dance, and reading comprehension, this activity is geared to reach all ability levels. After reading a variety of fables and discussing story elements and character traits, class members select a moral to use as the...

Kids look at a beautiful work of art to practice grammar, make connections from life to art, and sketching. They identify all the parts of grammar they see in the image, discuss what they see and do on a picnic, and then draw an imaged...

In this multiple English activities worksheet, students complete a variety of assignments: write three onomatopoeia sentences, add ten endings to ten words, give the root words to eight words, play two rounds of word chess, find the...

Read then role-play the characters from story of If You Give A Pig a Pancake. Young actors use improvisation and characterization to create the characters from the story. They will also write and role play original version of the...

Learners consider the benefits that so-called disruptive technology can have in the classroom, then design class activities that feature such technology prominently. They write essays responding (as students) to their classmates'...

Learners dance the image of falling snow. They move, swing, fall, and rise to music working to depict snow falling, the sun, and high/low movements. This is a well-thought out lesson that aids them in seeing movement as a form of...

Eleventh graders examine political, cultural, and social movements through music. In this 1960s American history lesson, 11th graders explore the music of the decade in order to better understand the complexity of the time period....

"People Everyday" offers class members an opportunity to develop their literacy analysis skills and to develop media literacy. Guided by an included list of discussion questions, groups examaine the word choice, literary devices used,...

Learners describe some of the distinguishing characteristics of rock, folk, blues, and country music. They identify two main musical roots of today's American popular music.

Students describe some of the characteristics of country and blues music. They see how country music rose to a nationally known music style. They write a two-paragraph essay on what they think country music be like in the next 100 years.

Students choreograph dances. In this dance choreography lesson, students evaluate musical selections, then create a dance that capture the emotion of the music.

Students will identify each symbol by sight stating the value of each. They will use cardboard notes to who what they have learned so far about the note values creating 4 and 6 count phrases.