Give this skills-based assessment halfway through your unit on Esperanza Rising. After a brief review, class members take the test, which asks them to show that they know how to analyze the novel independently. They are asked to...

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.

An assessment designed to examine scholars' reading comprehension skills takes place over three days. Starting with a read-aloud of My Five Senses by Aliki, learners then take notes and discuss their most memorable moments with...

Is it crazy to fall in love with your own work, or is that the purest love of all? Compare two renditions of the classic Greek myth Pygmalion and Galatea with a literary analysis exercise. After students compare the similarities and...

The end of the year has arrived, which means it's time to find out exactly what your fifth graders have learned over the past few months. With the help of this Common Core-designed assessment that includes two narrative passages and...

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...

Heroes rise from adversity. That theme forms the focus of the critical lens essay in a sample comprehensive English examination. The exam, which is part of a larger series of sample standardized tests, also includes two short response...

With the end of the year quickly approaching it's time to find out exactly how much your sixth graders have learned. Specifically designed for the Common Core ELA standards, this practice test gives students five reading passages,...

Jack London's heart for adventure has come to define the spirit of America and its frontier. Selected passages from the foreword The Cruise of the Snark take eighth graders through London's construction and voyage of his ship before...

Looking at literature through a critical lens helps readers connect the text to the larger world. An essay examining the theme "There is no ill in the world without a remedy" forms the main part of a sample comprehensive English...

The rides at a theme park always have limits on weight or number of riders. This makes a natural example of the use of inequalities to solve real-world problems. Learners explore intuitive solutions using substitution to solve the...

As an assessment of their skill in crafting a compare and contrast essay, class members read and compare the portrayals of nature in excerpts from naturalist John Muir's My First Summer in the Sierra and from poet Emily Dickinson's...

Close the unit on Esperanza Rising with an in-class analytic essay on how Esperanza changes over the course of the novel. Writers can use any of their notes and work from the unit as well as their drafts of the first two paragraphs of...

Quiz takes phrases and key words and you pick the theme of geography the phrases describes.

"Training for the Presidency" is a one-page, fictional, reading passage about Abraham Lincoln as a child. He does chores for a farmer because the book he had borrowed from him had gotten wet when rain came through the cabin walls. It is...

Read a short text and then determine the main idea in this five question quiz.

"Nature's Violet Children" is a one page, folktale about violets who were sad because a little girl picked them and took them home. It is followed by open-ended questions which require students to provide evidence from the story; it...

"The Cloud" is a one-page, folktale about a cloud who moved closer to the earth, despite warnings that it would die, to save the drought-stricken plants and animals. It is followed by questions which require students to provide evidence...