Practice makes perfect. A practice test designed for the ELA MCAS Assessment gives seventh grade learners the opportunity to answer reading comprehension questions and respond to essay prompts. Questions involve general fiction and...

Use a performance task to assess third graders' ability to read informational text. After they plan a lemonade stand business, young entrepreneurs implement that plan through informational writing. The task assumes learners can...

How do you know what traits a character displays in a story? Learners select a character and find list three traits for this character, explaining why they chose each trait. They then put this information together into a paragraph or essay.

Tap into the imaginative minds of young learners with a creative writing activity. After reading the myth Giants and Mosquitoes, this student guide supports young writers as they brainstorm and develop their very own creation myths....

Language arts learners don't need a lecture about poetry; they listen to poetry every day on the radio! Apply skills from literary analysis to famous songs and beautiful lyrics with a instructional activity about literary...

Guide your class through a text with resources for before and after reading. Learners ask questions, discuss characters and plot points, point out elements of the reading that stood out, and compose brief summaries.

A three-part writing assessment challenges scholars to think critically about schools of the past and present. Learners read informative texts, answer questions to prepare for a discussion, research in small groups, complete a Venn...

Need an extra challenge for your best readers? Check out a unit that uses Hannah Webster Foster’s epistolary novel, The Coquette, published in 1797, as the anchor text. The resource is packed with project ideas; each with its...

Get an idea of how your class members might perform on the Common Core tests with a comprehensive practice test. The assessment includes literary and informational passages for learners to read an analyze. Pupils respond to a series of...

Encourage scholars to share their love of reading with informative and engaging book reviews. Here, you'll find a series of guides that walk learners through the review writing process. Included in the collection is information about...

Feeling the pressure to confirm is something any adolescent can relate to. Explore an essential theme with a response to literature assessment that prompts learners to identify main ideas with evidence and supporting details.

Visit the Magic Treehouse and take your class on a trip through time with a reading of the children's book Mummies in the Morning. Using the story to spark an investigation into Egyptian culture, this literature unit engages...

Let's partition rectangles into equal parts. Assess learners on their ability to divide shapes into equal parts, and their ability to explain their thinking.

It's a small world after all. In the middle school assessment task, learners use data that imagines there are only 100 people in the world to answer questions about population demographics. Young mathematicians use ratio and proportional...

Challenge writers to compose an essay detailing their stance on, and the history of, voting. Three assignments, each broken down into three parts, requires fifth graders to take notes, read and complete charts, write paragraphs, compare...

Everyone has a different point of view, even when it comes to the enormity of the universe. Two separate text passages explain the scope of a galaxy, prompting young readers to write an essay about each author's argument and how the...

Need a DBQ practice set? Whether or not your class is preparing for the AP exam, learners will benefit from analyzing primary source documents about economic and social change. For Part A, the short-answer questions, participants read...

It is difficult to articulate how growing up feels as accurately and beautifully as Sandra Cisneros does in her short story "Eleven." After seventh graders read the story and note the author's use of figurative language, they respond to...

How do you assess whether pupils have mastered certain concepts and skills? Designing a performance task that asks learners to demonstrate their skills and providing writers with a rubric that identifies these skills and provides...

Ready your pupils for Common Core testing by providing them with practice. For this assessment, learners read and respond to a variety of different passages in both multiple-choice and essay format. An online version is also included.

The end of the year has arrived, which means it's time to find out what your third graders have learned with this practice Common Core assessment. Presented with one narrative and one expository reading passage, young learners...

Check in on the development of your fifth graders' reading and writing skills with this Common Core-designed assessment. Given a series of six reading passages ranging from narrative stories to informational texts, young...

Keep an eye on the growth of your sixth graders' reading and writing skills with the help of this practice Common Core assessment. Working their way through the six included fiction and nonfiction reading passages, learners answer a...

Conduct a lesson that leads into a writing assessment. After reading an excerpt from From Seed to Pumpkin, first graders demonstrate their interpretation of sections of the passage by sketching the details from each part.