A lovely guided reading lesson awaits you and your students. They read the book,Corn is Maize: The Gift of the Indians, by Aliki, summarize the important events of the story, and describe how corn has helped develop culture in America.

Learn about the government's role in everyday life in a guided reading activity. Groups create a KWL chart concerning the government's impact on the community.

As a summative assessment for this unit on colonial trade, fourth graders listen to and read informational texts in order to demonstrate their ability to take notes, write summaries, and draw connections. Young scholars first listen as...

Calling all junior detectives! Scholars use the tools of investigation to determine the causes and impacts of the American Civil War. Using viewing guides, videos, group research, and written resources, they discover what it takes to...

Students blend phonemes. In this guided reading lesson, students create words by blending isolated phonemes. Students read a book discussing families.

Accompany a reading of First Come the Zebra written and illustrated by Lynne Barasch with a teacher's guide equipped with before reading, vocabulary, and after reading activities. Additional social studies,...

Learn about Mexican culture while simultaneously strengthening reading, writing and computer skills. In order to get the most out of Esperanza Rising, pupils should have prior knowledge of Mexican culture. Therefore, there are links to a...

Katherine Paterson’s young adult novel Lyddie is the foundation of a differentiated instruction unit that not only explores the rise of industrialization and labor but women’s rights issues as well. After learners read the novel, they...

In the tenth instructional activity of this unit, young scholars learn to categorize information as they continue researching their colonial trade. During guided practice, the teacher models how to read informational text slowly while...

Students explore Asian American culture. In this multicultural guided reading instructional activity, students brainstorm a list of communication tools and share languages they speak. Students read Grandfather Counts by Andrea Cheng,...

Sail with Christopher Columbus on a biographical reading adventure. Young explorers learn about the life of Sir Columbus as they hone their comprehension skills through guiding questions, shared reading, and fluency practice. Included in...

Trading in Colonial America is the focus of a lesson plan that boosts reading skills. As a class, scholars examine the informational text for crucial details, use their newfound knowledge to share information with their peers, and write...

Even lawyers can find the US Constitution to be very wordy! Help learners create a foundation for understanding the Constitution with several analysis essays. Multiple activities complement the reading and allow for active and meaningful...

The materials in this 48-page packet are designed to supplement a unit study of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Included are vocabulary lists and activities, discussion questions and quizzes, book report ideas, a bibliography of...

Prepare your readers for Briar Rose with an Anticipation Guide that asks them to agree or disagree with a series of statements that reflect issues raised by Jane Yolen’s narrative about a young girl’s research into her grandmother’s...

The events of the Holocaust in World War II would never happen again, right? Scholars research the current genocide taking place in Darfur. Using video and Holocaust Reading Passages, they analyze the horror of this forgotten part of the...

Students complete a vocabulary chart, review proper/common nouns, discuss and review comparative adjectives and make "self to text" connections before reading. For this language arts lesson, comprehension questions are completed during...

As part of a group of lessons, your class will return to the primary text for this unit, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Key vocabulary as well as close reading strategies continue to be the focus skills; however, this lesson...

“We the people . . .” Thus begins the Preamble to the Constitution. Using a close reading approach, class members examine an excerpt from Linda Monk’s article that traces how the interpretation of these words has evolved. Some of your...

Historical fiction novels give readers a chance to step into someone else's shoes. An educator's guide from Penguin Common Core Lesson Plans provides resources to accompany three historical fiction novels written by Ruta Sepetys: Between...

Judge Learned Hand's "Spirit of Liberty" speech delivered during the July, 1944 "I Am an American Day" celebration is the subject of a close reading activity that models for learners how to approach a dense, difficult text.

A lot of secrecy shrouded the creation of the atomic bomb. Readers uncover some of that secrecy using an educator's guide for the novel The Green Glass Sea. Three weeks of lesson plans feature discussion questions and reading...

After several short 15-minute mini-lessons, your learners will gain an understanding of the characteristics of a non-fiction text. Using the book Map It by Elspeth Leacock, your class will become acquainted with non-fiction terms...

The Great Fire by Jim Murphy provides the text for a study of the Chicago fire of 1871. The plan is designed as a close reading activity so that all learners have the same background information require for writing. Richly detailed, the...