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...

Approach the topic of popularity with this resource from the New York Times and their Learning Network series. The article is about Alexandra Robbins' "Quirk Theory." Learners respond to the article excerpt either on paper or...

Cover both capitalization and the days of the week with a great kindergarten activity! Kids read each day of the week out loud, then write the name of the day on a line. They answer three questions about certain days of the week,...

The Secret Life of Bees provides high schoolers an opportunity to connect the events in the novel to events in America’s history. After choosing a topic from a provided list, individuals research how the event affected the Civil Rights...

How skilled are your class members at summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting from a text? Find out with this assessment that asks readers to identify the thesis statement, the summary, the paraphrases, and the quoted material in an...

Shorten words with contractions. Second graders use apostrophes to shorten words, including harder ones like might not. Next, they write out the longer versions of various contractions. Have them write a story with these contractions for...

Here's reading guide to help guide your high schoolers through chapters 20, 21, and 22 of The Catcher in the Rye. In addition to the nine questions listed, there's a teacher guide attached to help your class develop a strategy for...

Check out this detailed resource for some beginning of the year activities. After examining examples, class members uses the computer lab to create a personal brochure enhanced with clip art or photos to introduce themselves to the...

Mix up your writing lessons by having kids look at recent newspaper articles instead of their own work. They work in pairs and rewrite sports news articles using synonyms and antonyms for a set number of words. Then they share their work...

"How might multiple perspectives of standardized testing impact me as a student?" is an example of an essential question that a researcher might use as a basis for this lesson plan on how to research and present a written stance on a...

Your pupils will be expected to determine the meaning of words and how those words affect the meaning of a text. Help them master this skill with the ideas listed here. First, look over the two activities that could be used for your...

What makes a story interesting? Complex characters! As part of a series of worksheets that prepares middle schoolers to write their own novel, the exercises included explain the role of the protagonist, the antagonist, and the supporting...

Emily Dickinson’s “Hope is a thing with feathers” is the focus of a series of activities that model for learners how close reading can lead to understanding. The whole class plays with the metaphor, groups talk about the author’s...

Guess the setting in a series of reading passages that allow learners to make inferences. Five short descriptions prompt kids to match one of four settings, based on context clues.

Good books are accessible through a variety of literary lenses. To consider how the same story can be seen in different lights, groups develop a storyboard for a movie teaser that would focus on one of six concepts found in Suzanne...

Students participate in an interdisciplinary lesson to discuss improvements that would make them want to return to a previously poor neighborhood.  In this civics lesson, students work in a budget to make a plan to better their...

Using the online catalog, researchers locate and record on a citation template specific sources for their research paper. A library specialist models searching strategies while the teacher introduces the research paper process. Daily...

A reading of “Gatsby’s Green Light Beckons a New Set of Strivers,” a New York Times article by Sara Rimer, triggers a discussion of the American Dream and what it means to strive for something. Following the discussion, class members...

"Stolen from Africa, brought to America,/Fighting on arrival, fighting for survival." Bob Marley's "Buffalo Soldiers" provides high schoolers an opportunity to explore the rich history of the Rastafarians in Jamaica and the Buffalo...

Students examine the Japanese writing form of Haibun. They identify the elements of Japanese prose and poetry, analyze a haibun for writing devices, complete a graphic organizer, and compose an original haibun as a form of journal keeping.

Using a constructivist approach and a graphic organizer, small groups work together to begin a paper, comparing and contrasting the novella Night and the movie Life is Beautiful. Assuming that your learners have studied both of these...

Did you know that modern Chinese literature “grew from the psychoanalytical theory of Sigmund Freud”? Designed for a world literature class, seniors are introduced to “One Evening in the Rainy Season,” Shi Zhecun’s stream of...

Fifth graders correspond with one another regarding interesting global topics. They swap interview questions and collaborate in the publishing of an online newspaper. This should be a highly motivating lesson which get kids writing!

Combine informational text and creative writing with one fun activity! Middle and high schoolers write found poems based on newspaper headlines that they find. The resource includes a thorough lesson plan and many links to articles that...