They Call Me Güero: A Border Kid's Poems by David Bowles is the focus of a five-week language arts unit unit. Fifth graders listen to various poems and participate in thoughtful discussions, examining vocabulary and learning new words in...

Students discover how to read with expression. By reading and rereading decodable words in connected texts, students study the importance of expressions and how it can make a book more enjoyable.

Students discuss their favorite book. In this book discussion lesson, students name the title and tell what makes the book special. Students also review the setting, plot, conflict, and resolution. Students make a book that tells all of...

Help your kindergarteners identify the main idea in a story. Small groups work with the teacher to make predictions and draw conclusions. They are able to determine cause and effect relationships. The lesson is divided into several days,...

If you were stranded on a deserted island, what book would you want with you? Robinson Crusoe of course! During his years stuck on an island, Crusoe learns to survive by making a canoe, finding food, and living in solitude. Scholars read...

Support your instruction of The Cay by Theodore Taylor with this extensive unit of materials. Provided here are prereading activities, worksheets and discussion questions for the entire book, and reading quizzes that you can use to check...

Pirates ahoy! Readers go on an adventure using a novel study for Treasure Island as they research and write about a modern-day pirate story. Additionally, scholars practice writing similes and alliteration before answering comprehension...

Literature circles can be so enjoyable and enlightening, but it's tough to make it around to each group in a short amount of time. This lesson suggests that each group records their discussion, and a different reading strategy is used...

Have class members create a recipe flip book for their favorite after school snack. Using ordinal words (first, second next, etc.), young chefs write and illustrate each step in the process on separate cards. They then design a cover,...

Ribbit ribbit! Hop through a series of activities based on A Tale of Two Frogs. Kids read the Russian folktale and answer reading comprehension questions before working on phonics exercises, tracing dotting lines to make a path...

Don't judge a book—or a toy—by its cover. Omri, a main character in The Indian in the Cupboard, quickly judged his plastic toy figures as boring. However, once placed in the cupboard, Omri's toys became something he never imagined....

What do wizards smell like? A novel study for Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy walks readers through chapter one to help them answer the question. Scholars also practice vocabulary from the chapter and invent original similes.

It's not easy to measure the weather. Pupils learn about what all weather has in common—the atmosphere. Scholars discover how a meteorologists must be able to measure aspects of the atmosphere and decipher the data. They then create a...

The Bradys, the Flintstones, and the Simpsons are some of pop culture's most memorable families. So how do the Applewhites stack up? Using a novel study for Surviving the Applewhites by Stephanie S. Tolan, scholars answer text-based...

Rita Williams-Garcia's One Crazy Summer describes three girls who go looking for their mother who ran out on them. Scholars complete a novel study guide with vocabulary exercises, character descriptions, and comprehension poems.

A novel study guide for Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage follows Henry through his encounter with war Activities include asking readers to complete sentences with vocabulary words, write using personification, and answer...

Students participate in a number of activities in order to study the history of photography and to examine the workings of a pinhole camera.

This detailed overview of a curriculum unit suggests using travel literature to engage and stimulate your third graders’ interest in reading. The suggested reading list includes fiction and non-fiction materials and offers urban children...

In this social studies worksheet, students create a model Washington Monument. Students use a pattern to cut, fold, tuck in the tabs, and tape together to create the model.

Although this vocabulary strategy would work in the context of any text, it's a piece of cake if you're reading Judi Barrett's book Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Go over the terms they will hear so pupils are ready to...

In many ways, Victorian Christmas is alive and well today! Class members read an informative passage to learn more about traditional Christmas gifts, decorations, crackers, and visits from Santa Claus in nineteenth-century England—as...

Readers draw connections between Bud, Not Buddy and Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford University commencement address and cite evidence from the two texts to support their analysis.

In preparation for the unit exam, groups employ the strategies they have been practicing to formulate an interpretative claim about the connections between Christopher Paul Curtis's " Bud, Not Buddy, and Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford...

Get big results out of a small-scale lab! Young chemists observe the electrolysis of sodium sulfate using a microscale experiment. A colorful indicator solution combined with the production of gas bubbles yields a variety of observations...