If figurative language makes your kids feel blue or under the weather, use an activity focused on idioms to help them feel on top of the world. Kids complete a chart with seven idiomatic phrases, adding the meaning of each along with an...

Students analyze visual arts by creating drawings in their classroom. In this art analysis lesson, students identify the paintings of Keith Haring by researching the web. Students utilize paper and oil pastels to create paintings...

This resource on personification provides three different approaches aimed at different levels. The first, appropriate for upper elementary, provides examples of personification, followed by an exercise that requires replacing a word in...

How do you figure out the meaning of a word you don't know? Young readers develop skills to identifying missing words in a story using context clues. Picture clues are used to identify covered words in the story I Can’t Get My Turtle to...

Delve into Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan with close reading and evidence-based, text-dependent questions. Part of a unit series, this well-sequenced, Common Core designed instructional activity draws on material from the...

Students gain an introduction to gestural line drawing along with art history correlations. They are encouraged to focus on the energy, mass, and expression of the subject rather than on illustrated replication.

Put the tips and tricks in this guide into practice in order to encourage your pupils to blossom into poets. A wonderful reference material for teachers, this packet includes definitions of poetic terms and forms as well as step-by-step...

Which of these is different? Pre-readers examine four pictures of familiar objects. Each picture has a row of images following it, and they must determine which of them is different. Once youngsters have figured it out, they circle the...

Students research visual arts by creating a presentation in their classroom. In this art history instructional activity, students identify the work of Keith Haring by researching the web and library. Students analyze images of Haring and...

It is much easier for kids to know they have reached a goal when that goal is clearly defined. By providing sixth graders with a checklist of Common Core reading standards written in "I can" format, each child can keep track of his own...

Students focus on the diagraph of sh. They recognize this in both the written and spoken word. To introduce this lesson, the teacher asks if anyone's mom or dad has told them shhhh, when they were trying to get them to quiet down. ...

Third graders visualize while reading the chapter book Charlotte's Web. When they get to the end of chapter two, they will draw a picture of what they just read. Then then share their images with the class.

Students discover the relationship between letters and phonemes. The teacher leads an oral demonstration of pronunciation and focus on the /a/ sound. Next, students examine a series of pictures, circling the ones where they hear the...

Looking to introduce some text-based questions into your ELA lessons? Practice the kinds of skills the Common Core demands with the seven text-based questions and the essay prompt provided here. Designed to be a three-day lesson, day one...

The beginning, a very good place to start, is also a very difficult thing to craft. Provide your writers with this handout that identifies, and provides examples of, six different types of narrative leads.

Students examine Keith Haring's art work. They apply visual imagery to rhyming, rhythmic words with Haring's "Dance" book. They make impressions on styrofoam plates to explore printmaking process.

Looking for a resource to introduce homeschoolers and other out-of-class learners to the elements of poetry? Check out this packet that defines and illustrates important poetry terms.

Students, through teacher modeling and guided practice, explore the concept of visualization and how it works to help them comprehend what they read. They read a story, visualize what has happened in the story, and then draw a picture...

Young scholars explore performing arts by reading a children's book in class. In this body movement lesson, students read the book Dance and create their own artistic impressions based on dancing images from the book. Young scholars...

First graders listen as the word "cat" is sounded out spreading out all the sounds contained. They discover the meaning of blending using the word "cat" and then changing the consonants to make new words. They then figure out new words...

Students discuss the advantages and disadvantages of private communities and the lives led by their residents. They design ideal planned communities for people featured in other Class Matters articles.

Students discover core democratic values. For this service learning lesson, students create posters in order to promote core democratic values.

Students explore U.S. history by researching famous Americans. In this Benjamin Franklin lesson plan, students read portions of a biography about Franklin and identify his position within U.S. politics and as a leader in the battle for...

Students use various types of people and the special places they each call home. They discover houses, like the world, are always changing. Students start out by brainstorming what was the one thing that made a house a home. They were...