Help your writers get started with these hooks! Twenty-five opening lines from the "Lives" column in the New York Times Magazine act as prompts for creative writing. Have your learners choose one prompt and write an original essay....

Classic fairy tales are great! They have memorable characters, present interesting story lines, and lend themselves to art projects. Grab a copy of "Rumpelstiltskin" and get ready to participate in several early literacy activities. The...

Start by clicking on the icon that says, "Download the Activity." The format is much easier to read and understand here! Then, encourage your class to write about some of their favorite things through a three-paragraph essay. Examples...

Students examine cultures, traditions, and feeling throughout cultures. In this cultural lesson, students use literature, maps, and cultural information to examine how people have universal feelings despite their different cultures and...

Invite your young writers to take the reins with writing dialogue. Using two characters of their own creation, kids work with partners and then individually to write short conversations.

Improve your youngsters' descriptive writing. They study an object and write about what they see as a warm-up, then they read an excerpt from Paul Guest's memoir, One More Theory about Happiness. The next part of the...

Elementary schoolers develop an awareness of the literary form known as the fable. They explore how authors write fables to pass along moral lessons. After reading and discussing many famous fables embedded in the plan, learners attempt...

Here's an activity designed to encourage character analysis. Readers craft a biopoem for a character in Orson Scott Cards' popular science fiction novel Ender's Game.

Willa Cather's novel My Antonia is full of vivid imagery. Encourage your pupils to visualize and translate images from the text into original writing with this guided imagery activity. Learners listen to an excerpt, take a moment to...

Can you find the themes from Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea in other books? What about picture books? Compare the novel to a picture book with a lesson about making predictions and finding textual evidence.

The biopoem is a great way for instructors to get to know class members, classmates to get to know each other, and readers to flesh out their understanding of a character. Why not create a biopoem for a character from Oedipus the...

Students explore the poem, "Declaration."  Students discuss how elements of poetry such as tone work to convey meaning. Students compare and contrast their lives and the lives of the poem's characters from South Africa.

Students read and analyze the poem, "Psalm of Life," by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. They create a Footsteps Quilt, developing quilt squares to represent each goal and gift they would leave as a gift to humanity.

After examining several Haiku and noting characteristics of the form, class members create five of their own poems. Use this resource for extra practice or review.

Rather than a lesson, this resource is a list of poetic forms and young poets are encouraged to try their hand at composing poems of various types.

This mini-lesson on onomatopoeia introduces the device through a poem and definition. It culminates in drawing an element of nature with the sound associated with it written across the picture.

Encourage readers to determine if Hamlet's madness is actually divinest sense. Class members analyze the words of the play before studying related texts, including T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," scenes from...

Students examine primary documents regarding Paul Revere's ride and its role in the Revolutionary War. They consider how Revere's role has been written about by Longfellow and others and discuss the discrepancies between accounts.

The work of Langston Hughes opens the door to research into the origin and legacy of the Harlem Renaissance and how the literature of the period can be viewed as a commentary on race relations in America. In addition, groups are assigned...

Search a variety of sources to create a multimedia or book project about Japan. Learners use the independent investigation method to plan and conduct research about Japan. They use the information they discover to create a computer book...

Small groups read assigned chapters from the book, Letters to Rifka, then work together to fill out comprehension worksheets associated with their chapters. This fine, 13-page instructional activity culminates with each group getting...

Fifth and sixth graders follow Lewis and Clark from St. Louis to the Pacific and back again. They read online journal entries made by Lewis and Clark to gather information. The official Lewis and Clark website is used by learners to...

Third graders research what a Haiku is and be able to answer related questions on an example of a Haiku. They create an original Haiku of their own using general Haiku characteristic guidelines. Students use Kid Pix to type in and...

Show a video clip that descripes how taking a journey can change a person's outlook on life. Learners write a paragraph about a place that uses imagery and tone to create a specfic effect. They evaluate their journal entries as well.