Is the nature of humans inherently good or evil? That is the question scholars consider in the fourth lesson of the Lord of the Flies unit. In a Four Corners activity, they examine statements about human nature and stand by the poster...

Asking questions about a text is an effective way to improve reading comprehension. Apply the Question Answer Response strategy to your unit on William Shakespeare's The Tempest. As kids read each passage, they decide if the answer...

Really? Rapping The Odyssey? Really. A discussion of the oral tradition of story telling and its links to Epic poetry sets the stage for a series of activities that encourage improvisation to integrate music into other classrooms....

It's hard to beat the beauty of John Steinbeck's prose, so borrow a little of it to form your own found poetry. After kids finish Chapter One of The Pearl, they select the most evocative and vivid words to create found poems.

Similes and metaphors make writing more beautiful and detailed, but can be a little harder to decipher during a first reading. Use a passage from The Man Who Loved Words to show young readers how to think through passages that...

Hiding in the filth of a sewer, as a child, to avoid capture by Nazi soldiers—sounds scary! Scholars investigate the youngest victims of the Holocaust, the children. They research video clips and written sources from the Holocaust...

Introduce young learners to the read-aloud process with a short biographical passage about Ray Charles. After listening to the passage, class members respond to factual, inferential, and evaluative questions, and then create a timeline...

Young historians watch a video of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivering his "I Have a Dream" speech and answer questions that test their knowledge of the event. After discussing the fact sheet, they reread the speech, select a phrase or...

Students create graphs, routes, and write an essay based on their research of the slave trade. In this slave trade lesson plan, students research the Middle Passage and how slave trade happened in the United States.

Asking questions about what you're reading is an effective way to connect with the text. After kids read passages from Kyoko Mori's Shizuko's Daughter, they identify questions about the passages as Right There, Think and...

As part of their study of Mitch Albom's Tuesdays with Morrie, class groups examine passages from the story and respond to a series of QAR questions.

Imagine what it was like to be a slave in the United States in 1845. Eighth graders are given an opportunity to experience life from the point of view of Frederick Douglass as they read and discuss an annotated passage from Narrative of...

Break your class into groups and have them read certain passages from the text Flipped (included here). After every two paragraphs, the groups stop to answer the questions included. Which questions provided are right there questions?...

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...

Explore reciprocal questioning with this ReQuest comprehension strategy. After reading a passage, learners first question the teacher, trying to "stump" her. Then it is the teacher's turn to ask the pupils questions. All correct answers...

Readers of Nineteen Eighty-Four engage in a close reading exercise that directs their focus to the key details Orwell provides in the opening paragraphs to introduce his dystopian society. The included worksheeet is divided into three...

Here's an activity that uses a reading comprehension strategy based on Bloom's taxonomy to focus readers' attention on key passages from Edward Bloor's Tangerine. Worthy of a place in your curriculum library.

Explore Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" in this literature analysis lesson. Middle schoolers read and summarize the plot of the story. They then adapt passages for a contemporary audience and analyze the...

Create an artifact kit to engage your young learners. Then, assign small groups a section of chapter three. They will identify the main idea and three supporting details for their section. Then, they select one artifact from the kit that...

Students study the German language. They research in small groups and create a Power Point presentation, write an essay with 15 sentences in German, prepare a food or wear a costume, and give an oral presentation.

Scholars investigate the Holocaust through the eyes of an Auschwitz survivor. They analyze and research a firsthand account of events inside the gas chambers moments before hundreds died. Using Holocaust Reading Passages and...

Here is a fine lesson plan on reading and understanding expository text designed for 4th graders. With a partner, learners read a passage of text about a machine called a wheelright. This machine was commonly used in the...

Students closely analyze testimony from the Holocaust. They express, in poetic form, meanings students created in their analysis. They react to written passages from the time period.

Students read selected passages from The Diary of Anne Frank. They, in groups, discuss the television / movie characters and create character webs involving these characters and those in the Anne Frank book.