Are all criminals bad people? Pupils answer this and other compelling questions in an anticipation guide for The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin. Designed for learners to complete before reading the text, the...

Discussion doesn't always need to be spoken. Before you begin The Tempest by William Shakespeare, have kids connect their ideas and experiences to central questions of the play with a silent discussion activity. Once they have...

Learners can respond to each chapter of The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton by composing journal entries. This page lists several prompts for each chapter that pupils can choose from. The prompts are based on the content of the chapter and...

Follow up a reading of The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me by Roald Dahl with this collaborative lesson on teamwork. Starting with a fun team game, learners go on to investigate examples of teamwork in the story before...

As part of their reading of Michael Morpurgo's novel Kensuke's Kingdom, young castaways create diary entries describing their own time left alone on an island.

Teach your class five reading strategies to help them with reading informational texts and literary texts. This packet, designed to help learners prepare for the CAHSEE, provides specific strategies that could be used to help prepare for...

What if the Gingerbread Man was trying to catch you, rather than the other way around? Pupils can find out what happens by reading the story The Gingerbread Man Loose in the School by Laura Murray and enrich their experience with the...

Support your fourth graders on the long and difficult journey to fluent reading with this collection of reading passages. Designed as fluency assessments, these short texts help students of varying abilities improve their...

Take your pick of 16 graphic organizers, all designed for persuasive writing. Some provide space to prepare an entire essay or speech, while others provide space for brainstorming and organizing ideas before settling on...

What better way to prepare your class for Common Core testing than with a practice test? The practice test includes several reading passages, both literary and informational, and learners respond to multiple choice questions...

Designed as a resource for teachers who use Man's Search for Meaning, this seven-page packet includes a list of related informational texts, research issues and project ideas, central questions, background information on World...

How much does your class know about the setting of Pride and Prejudice? Explore Jane Austen's romantic world with a KWHL chart that helps kids note what they already know about 18th century England, what they want to know, how they...

Designed for Hard Gold, a novel in Avi's I Witness series, this teaching guide includes a summary of the story and information about the writer as well as chapter-by-chapter vocabulary lists, text-based reading questions,...

Help your pupils take charge of their inferring abilities with an exercise designed for direct practice with making and supporting inferences. Learners read four short passages and answer two to three questions for each passage that...

This packet, the first in the series of support materials for the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt thematic units on silly stories, contains enrichment activities for learners who have mastered the basic concepts of the lessons.

This overview of Theodore Taylor's The Cay is designed as an introduction for teachers who are considering using Theodore Taylor's novel for whole-class and/or book circle study. 

Dr. Martin Luther King, Gloria Estefan, Lou Gehrig. A biography, a civil rights quilt, inspiration poetry. This packet of support materials for the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt thematic units on heroes, contains enrichment activities...

Improve reading comprehension with a set of ESL worksheets. Kids read through various passages, note which facts are true or false, mark their opinion on two statements, and write a short reply based on a writing prompt.

How often do you ride a bike? Time frequency words are featured in a lesson plan designed for ESL/ELD classrooms. 

Throughout 10 lessons, fourth graders learn how to plan, organize, write, and edit their own personal narratives. In the beginning, young writers come up with ideas of personal experiences and the emotions linked with those experiences....

Examine the life of steamboat inventor, Robert Fulton, through reading comprehension worksheet that includes both multiple choice and short answer questions. Then, take part in a word search and write definitions, words, and...

Your pupils are poets, and now they'll be able to show it with the exercises in this packet. The lessons, designed for beginner, intermediate, and experienced poets, not only feature a variety of poetic forms, but take...

As part of a study of Juliet Marillier's Wildwood Dancing, class members create vocabulary squares for words drawn from the story.

Use a vocabulary asssignment as a quick activity between reading chapters of Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech. Young readers choose their favorite words from the vocabulary word list to describe Sal, Phoebe, or any other character from...