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.

Learn about the events that helped shape the United States of America. Elementary schoolers explore the Civil War with six different activities. Each activity has a different focus: literature connections, primary sources, vocabulary,...

The classic book, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs lesson, is used to help readers compare and contrast the weather in Chewandswallow to their own town. Learners write their own fantasy weather story. This lesson is intended to be an...

What is your strategy? Scholars read "The Border" and work with a partner to practice reading strategies to use while independent reading. They identify difficult parts where they practiced rereading by marking them with sticky notes,...

Scholars extend their research of the food chain that Michael Pollan discusses in The Omnivore's Dilemma. They determine additional consequences of the food chain and add them to their Cascading Consequences charts. Additionally, pupils...

What's the difference between a position speech and a position paper? Scholars use a rubric to analyze a model essay about Michael Pollan's food chains to understand what makes them unique. Additionally, pupils create anchor charts...

It's time to stake a claim! Working with partners, scholars create stakeholder charts for better industrial management of water. As they complete the chart, pupils consider an option for managing water more sustainably, identify...

The big idea in the last lesson in the Health Smart series is that individuals must practice emotional first aid, that just as we take care of physical injuries, we must take care of emotional injuries. Scholars watch a short video and...

Scholars analyze words to determine the central idea of the poem My Last Duchess. Pupils begin by discussing homework and then form pairs to work through a list of questions about the poem. Finally, they complete a brief writing prompt...

Refugee & Immigrant Transitions is an organization that helps newcomers adjust to life in the United States through education and community leadership opportunities. As part of a mid-unit assessment, pupils independently read a...

 Scholars discover how working in a textile mill in the nineteenth century affected the title character from Katherine Paterson's novel, Lyddie. Partners analyze quotes from the novel and then add evidence and questions about...

It's puzzle time! Pupils participate in a jigsaw activity to discuss the various uses of water, including personal, agricultural, and industrial uses. They also conduct a close reading of The Big Thirst by Charles Fishman and answer...

Get deep! Teach scholars how to make connections between texts to deepen their understanding of a topic. Using the resource, pupils read and annotate a short informational text about Sudan's Civil War and refugee crisis. Next, they...

The firsthand accounts of what it was like to be an enslaved person in the mid-1800s riveted a nation and the issue ultimately led to civil war. Using excerpts from Frederick Douglass's autobiography, budding historians examine what it...

Students practice reading for comprehension and understanding. In groups, students read, out loud, using a conversation voice. They predict and discuss the story as it unfolds.

Students discuss the importance of comprehension and the use of summarization. Through guided practice, they follow six steps in finding and highlighting important information from an article, while deleting information that is not...

Students comprehension should be a major emphasis when studying how to read. They summarize as one effective strategy that helps students comprehend what they are reading. Students build summarization skills that build comprehension...

Students use the comprehension strategy question-answer to improve reading comprehension. They read a passage out of their textbook, and the teacher models the question/answer strategy by asking about key points mentioned in the reading.

Students develop summarization strategies by asking themselves questions as they read. They devlop these strategies help them develop better comprehension. Students goals for reading is comprehension. They explore helpful...

Students explore reading comprehension strategies. They discuss the story-grammar strategy. Students discuss the importance of comprehension. They discuss questions they should ask while reading a text. Students read a story and stop to...

Fourth graders develop vocabulary to aid in comprehension as they read the novel, Class President.

Students study strategies that aid comprehension. They focus on the main ideas of a passage and eliminate unnecessary and repetitive information. They substitute super ordinate terms for a list of items and create a topic sentence.

Students are introduced to strategies that they can use to summarize text. After reading an article, they use five steps to accurately summarize the material to share with the class. They also review what it means to comprehend what...

Students explore feelings. In this language arts lesson, students realize that books help in talking about feelings. Students discuss how they feel during the reading of a story and listen to each other in answering various comprehension...