Curated OER
Wordless Picture Books
Students use wordless picture books to examine elements regarding a story, the plot, and characters. In this wordless picture books lesson, students select a book to creatively discuss. Students then listen to the teacher read the story...
Curated OER
The Juicy Stuff Matters
Students explore and practice the strategy of summarization and scaffolding while mastering how to recap the details from a story and/or singling out what is important to recall from a story. They summarize the book, "How the Grinch...
Curated OER
Mixing Colors with "Little Blue and Little Yellow"
Learners mix colors to make new colors. In this color mixing lesson, students listen to Leo Lionni's Petit Bleu et Petit Jaune, before retelling the beginning, middle, and end of the story. They watch as the teacher mixes food coloring...
Curated OER
Creating Comic Strips
Learners recognize the elements needed to create a comic strip. In this comic strip lesson, student understand that comic strips need words and pictures. Students find differences and similarities in comic strips. Learners describe how...
Curated OER
Amazing Animal Alliteration Book
Students understand the meaning of alliteration. For this alliteration lesson, students write sentences using alliteration and recognize how it changes the writing in a story.
Shakespeare Globe Trust
Fact Sheet: Writing Plays
Who were some of the popular playwrights of Elizabethan England? Using the provided fact sheets, scholars research playwrights, explore three different types of plays, and learn about censorship in Elizabethan England.
National Endowment for the Arts
Teacher's Guide: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
A 10-lesson unit takes high schoolers through a novel study of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. To start, students learn about Fitzgerald's background and gain historical context that prepares them for a reading of the book. The...
Novelinks
The Cay: Concept Analysis
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.
Roald Dahl
Fantastic Mr. Fox
A fancifully illustrated guide to Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr. Fox, this series of lessons, activities, and tasks could be used in its entirety or picked apart and used piecemeal. Have young readers investigate the role of dialogue in...
Curated OER
Regarding the Fountain: Questioning Strategy—Cubing
Look deeper into the text with a reading strategy based on asking critical thinking questions. While reading Reading the Fountain by Kate Klise, learners think of questions that help them describe, compare, associate, analyze,...
Novelinks
Walk Two Moons: Anticipation Guide
Before you begin a unit on Sharon Creech's Walk Two Moons, introduce class members to the literary themes of the book with an anticipation guide. As they read through ten sentences that address different aspects of the plot,...
ReadWriteThink
Looking for the History in Historical Fiction: An Epidemic for Reading
Combine informational reading skills with fictional text in an innovative historical fiction lessons. After reading a fictional text related to diseases, class members read non-fictional text to gain knowledge about specific infectious...
Curated OER
Conflict Resolution and Peer Mediation
Students investigate a problem and look at the associated positive and negative choices and consequences. They work together to make a group decisions and role play in peer mediation situations.
Curated OER
Puss in Boots/Jamil and the Clever Cat
Second graders read the story PUSS IN BOOTS identifying main characters, setting, and significant events. They then read the story JAMIL AND THE CLEVER CAT and compare it with the story PUSS IN BOOTS compiling a list of characters,...
Curated OER
Imagining the Environment: Introduction
Learners examine the importance of the environment including the setting, lights, sound, costumes, and props for a play or story. They visualize the appropriate environments and practice applying the techniques.
Curated OER
Cops and Robbers
Second graders observe the teacher model writing a letter to the author of the book, COPS AND ROBBERS. They then compare the story structure of the book to those of FUNNYBONES and identify the setting, characters and theme.