Curated OER
Chicken Soup with Rice Extension Activities
After reading Chicken Soup with Rice, by Maurice Sendak, incorporate some of these great extension activities into your lesson plan. Ideas include focusing on knowing the months of the year, or studying the illustrations and how they are...
Student Achievement Partners
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm - "The Fisherman and his Wife"
Help young readers learn to read and interpret complex text independently. Teach young children to ask interpretive questions and use the text itself to answer them. Use art, word play and drama to provide a deeper understanding of...
ReadWriteThink
Martin Luther King, Jr. and Me: Identifying with a Hero
Here, young historians compare their early lives to that of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s. They listen to a read aloud of a story by Dr. King's sister, and then write in the provided reflective journal template. Lastly, they share their...
Center for History Education
Women's Rights in the American Century
Today, many young people find it hard to understand why it took over 150 years for women in the United States to get the right to vote—why there was even a need for the suffrage movement. As they read a series of primary source...
Curated OER
Read loud: The Media
In this media read aloud activity, learners read a dialogue aloud in pairs. Student A will ask a question about the media, and Student B gives the answer.
Curated OER
The 5 W's of Reading
Primary students will use the five "W" questions for reading comprehension as they read silently to themselves so that they can understand and remember what they have read. They then read The Velveteen Rabbit aloud, discussing the five...
Curated OER
Literal Meaning of Reading
Students demonstrate literal meaning of a fiction book. In this reading comprehension lesson, students listen to the book, If You Give a Mouse a Muffin and practice the "m" sound during the read aloud. Students answer questions about the...
Curated OER
A More Perfect Union: The Story of Our Constitution
Sit back, relax, and transport to 1787! This instructional activity on the Constitution begins with guided imagery of the Constitutional Convention. The class reads A More Perfect Union: The Story of Our Constitution in an interactive...
Curated OER
Training Students for Literature Circles
Role sheets clearly define expectations of all group members in this introduction to literature circles. By using a variety of picture books or short texts, readers can practice roles while the teacher circulates to each group observing...
Curated OER
The Final Analysis: Cause and Effect, Fact and Opinion
Middle schoolers read and review informational texts, analyze cause and effect, and distinguish fact from opinion. They assess a "one-minute mystery" you read aloud for cause and effect relationships. Resource includes complete set of...
Clark County School District
Owl Moon by Jane Yolen
A thorough lesson plan takes your first grade class through Jane Yolen's beautiful Owl Moon. It crafts the unit with clear objectives, high-level guiding questions, cloze activities and sentence frames, and extension activities at the...
Curated OER
Deadly Stingrays!
Young scholars read a story called Irwin's Death Draws Attention to Stingrays and answer vocabulary and comprehension questions about it. In this stingray lesson plan, student respond to literature by answering questions, recalling...
Curated OER
Hooverville Diorama
Fifth graders explore life during the Great Depression. In this Great Depression lesson plan, 5th graders gain an understanding of what life was like during the Great Depression. Students draw conditions that families lived in and...
Curated OER
The Great Kapok Tree Debate
Students participate in a read aloud of the story, "The Great Kapok Tree" in which a logger decides not to cut down a tree. In small groups, they discuss and write about their opinion on the logger's decision. Each group then presents...
Curated OER
Mouse Mess
Scholars practice rhyming and phonemic awareness using trade books and poetry. They will listen to the book Mouse Mess several times throughout the week, identifying rhyming words, and matching words that begin with the same sound. Then...
Curated OER
Read It, Picture It! Reading to Learn
Students examine the reading comprehension strategy of visualization. They practice visualization by making pictures in their mind. They draw the pictures from their visualizations with explanations.
Curated OER
A New Deal for the Arts - WPA Photographs
Students examine school life during the 1930s. They discuss the Great Depression and the New Deal, examine and discuss photographs from the Library of Congress website, and complete a worksheet about school life during the Great Depression.
Institute for Teaching through Technology and Innovative Practices
The Right Number of Elephants
How can you tell if a number of items is reasonable? Combine math and language arts with a fun lesson based on Jeff Shepard's The Right Number of Elephants. After reading the book, kids discuss amounts of other items and create minibooks...
Center for History Education
Blockbusting: Social and Economic Change through Real Estate
"Redlining," "Blockbusting," and "White Flight" may not be terms familiar to young historians. Here's a lesson that introduces middle schoolers to these terms and the actions associated with them. Class members examine a series of...
Curated OER
Listen a Minute: Exercise
Even if they hate exercise, this lesson could be a great way to practice writing and answering questions for your ELD pupils. First, a tape-script about exercise (which could be read aloud by the teacher) provides them with information...
Curated OER
Compare and Contrast: Literary Analysis
Great for a reading intervention or remedial Language Arts class, this lesson uses two stories from Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul III ("Terri Jackson" and "Mary Lou" to reinforce note-taking skills, story elements, and comparing and...
Curated OER
Read with Speed
Young scholars increase their reading fluency through various techniques. After reviewing decoding and rereading as good reader strategies, students complete an initial read of a teacher selected text. They complete a timed reading...
Curated OER
The Little Engine that Could Mini Unit Plan
The best part about teaching little ones is setting up fun, thematic learning stations. Here is a full day of activities that all relate to the story, The Little Engine that Could. Included are six different activities that cover art,...
Curated OER
Twenty-Five Great Ideas for Teaching Current Events
Teaching current events can be an amazingly-rewarding part of your teaching week. This resource presents twenty-five ways to incorporate current events into your curriculum. It offers some outstanding ideas, such as providing your...