Explore the importance of correct verbal and written communication in the real world. Middle schoolers brainstorm what their world would be like without punctuation, listen to and read excerpts without punctuation, and record and present...

Here is a fun way to investigate fruits and vegetables. In this healthy diet and reading instructional activity, learners read and recite several poems about fruits and vegetables. They sort pictures and word cards with assorted names of...

Fifth graders determine how freedom comes with rights and responsibilities through literature and poetry about World War II. In this World War II lesson, 5th graders use the letters in the word "infamy" to write an acrostic poem. They...

Introduce your class to the writing of the indigenous Americans and, even more well known, their story telling. An engaging presentation describes what kinds of texts would be included in the oral stories performed and some common...

A reading of Mark Twain’s The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County not only offers pupils an opportunity to practice their listening skills but also provides them with examples of dialectic speech. This is the gol’derndest lesson...

Some books are perfect for drawing connections between multiple subjects. The book Hill of Fire becomes the hub for three very different, yet related activity ideas. First the class hones their oral language skills by creating an...

Really? Rapping The Odyssey? Really. A discussion of the oral tradition of story telling and its links to Epic poetry sets the stage for a series of activities that encourage improvisation to integrate music into other classrooms....

Students, after reading Fahrenheit 451, brainstorm inventions that could have been in the novel. They present their invention to the class and writing an expository essay about their creation.

Learners work in groups to identify the major characters and events found in a Nevada Native American folklore story. Each of the groups takes on the role of a different tribe, and they are given a story from that tribe's oral history....

A special education classroom examines a variety of literature from Latin American authors. In groups, they read excerpts from many autobiographies and compare them with their own life. After writing their own autobiographies, they...

Learners collect memorabilia and create shadow boxes in the style of David Stewart. They also compose a poem and explain their identity in an oral presentation. This is a rare lesson that works quite well for a variety of age levels.

Students research historical events of the past century to recognize that society impacts the themes within art and literature. They then interview an individual to develop a biographical narrative, a collage and finally an oral...

Women's voices are becoming more prominent in the world of literature, but for centuries, this wasn't the case. Young historians research a woman whose writings are considered to be lost, out of print, or forgotten. They develop an oral...

Mexican folk songs offer an authentic look at WWII immigrant workers. This study of the U.S. Bracero Program sets historians up with context information so they can write their own corrido. The class reviews themes and formulas of...

Very young learners study the ways that oral traditions play such a huge part in the culture of Native Americans. They see how Elders pass along stories to the younger generations. If possible, a tribal Elder comes into the class to...

Do you remember the days when a cup of coffee cost five cents? At A.W. Dennett restaurant in 1894, you could buy a five-cent cup of coffee and as well as a five-cent slice of pie to accompany it. The menu from that year is a primary...

Building on prior knowledge of the pervious lesson in the series, pupils explain the previous lesson to each other. Then they write a simple guide for a young child to read on the same topic. 

Develop fluency with a variety of works. Help kindergartners use multiple strategies to understand text and decoding. They will create an alphabet poem book on Kid Works 2 to illustrate and write their own poem. In the end, they will...

Celebrate the arrival of winter with a reading of Jack Ezra Keats' book The Snowy Day. Engaging children by asking them about their own experiences in the snow, the teacher goes on to read the story...

Assess whether your kindergartners can identify numbers in random order using two sets of numeral cards 1-10 and 11-20. Starting with a small group and the 1-10 deck give your learners the task of putting the cards into order from...

Individually, letters have their own sounds, but when combined with other letters, those sounds completely change. Introduce letter combinations with a lesson that asks learners to search for combinations in familiar words and use oral...

Just like scholars plug something in to close a circuit, they must plug a consonant onto a word to make closed syllables. Help learners distinguish between open and closed syllables with a series of activities that emphasize open...

Ninth graders examine how literature connects to real-life and see how irony aids in the development of theme. They read Shirley Jackson's The Lottery, and discuss elements of foreshadowing and situational irony. Then learners will write...

Whether you are viewing a landscape painting of a farm, examining a still-life portrait of a bowl of fruit, or reading a descriptive poem about cultivating food, you can't deny that agriculture plays a major role in visual and language...