California Education Partners
Tuck Everlasting
An assessment takes a close look at the story, Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt, and tests writing abilities. Over the course of two days, scholars read an excerpt, answer questions on a instructional activity pertaining to...
Penguin Books
A Teacher's Guide to the Signet Classic Edition of William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar
Are the lessons of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar still applicable today? Explore themes, characterization, and plot structure with a thorough teacher's guide to the play. The resource covers the entire text and offers rigorous activities...
Curated OER
Learn-to-Read Pumpkin Patch
Students practice identifying and pronouncing the short letter "u" sound. In this phonetic awareness lesson, students access the Starfall.com website and follow the directions on the screen to reinforce the short "u" sound. Students can...
American Immigration Law Foundation
No Pretty Pictures
Here is a nice set of activities and discussion questions to accompany your class reading of No Pretty Pictures, a memoir of a young girl's experiences and struggle for survival during the Holocaust.
Teach Hub
New Year’s Resolution Classroom Activity
Create a sense of accountability among scholars with a lesson that focuses on making and keeping New Year's resolutions. Writers compose a five paragraph essay focused on three resolutions—promises to self improvement, to...
Curated OER
Storytelling
Show young readers how to put some personality and voice into their storytelling with an in-depth assignment. Kids practice saying the same thing, such as counting from one to ten, in different tones and perspectives, and then work on...
Chicago Botanic Garden
Faces of Climate Change
You know global warming is real when your squirrel feeder is full of popped corn instead of kernels! Activity two in a series of five allows learners to explore climate change through the eyes of another. After briefly analyzing their...
Curated OER
Pre-writing activities for improving students' connections to literature
Pupils, while reading a novel together in class, jot in their journals any connections to their own lives they can make between the text and self, text to text or text to the world. Various themes are connected to open more doors to the...
Curated OER
The Wolf's Tale
In this the wolf's tale: pre-reading activities worksheet, 4th graders write a definition and ingredients of a fairy tale, then sort the characters in Little Red Riding Hood, match sentences from the story and write the ending.
Curated OER
Journey to Topaz: Directed Reading Thinking Activity
Have you used the directed reading thinking activity in your classroom? Doubling as either a prereading strategy, or a during reading strategy, it helps readers connect the historical background of the text to the text itself. As the...
Curated OER
Shadows
Students read books, learn about the letter s, and eat raisins all to learn about shadows. In this shadows lesson plan, students also go outside and look at shadows and sing songs about shadows.
Curated OER
Phonemic Awareness: Phoneme Blending
This resource is more of a suggestion than a full lesson. It explains how young pre-readers can work with their teacher to practice blending phonemes to make words. The class watches the teacher as she says and orally segments a word...
Curated OER
Man on Trial Pre-Reading Activities
Students employ different strategies in order to increase reading comprehension. The Story is used to captivate the learners and provide a link to long term memory. By studying the one text in depth the skills will be embedded in the...
Towson University
Berries...With a Side of DNA? (High School)
Is DNA still present after picking fruit or cooking vegetables? Biology scholars extract and collect DNA strands in an impactful lab. Working groups prepare their samples and compare their results to negative and positive standard...
Curated OER
Strong Descriptive Writing: James and the Giant Peach
Support your writers! Clear procedures and appropriate support make this a superb resource for elementary writing instruction. Ready your class to compose original descriptive paragraphs inspired by the episode in Roald Dahl's James and...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Vocabulary: Morphemic Elements, Make It Meaningful
Scholars learn to find meaning in words using affixes with a language arts activity. In pairs, children sort cards with printed sentences that include words with the prefixes mis- and pre- and the suffixes -er, -ness, and -able. Then,...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Vocabulary: Morphemic Elements, Rooting for Meaning!
Scholars work with root and meaning cards to build vocabulary skills. Playing with a partner, learners read a root, locate its meaning, and cover it with a counter. The first player to cover their board wins.
PBS
Stories of Painkiller Addiction: Prescription Drug Abuse Awareness Campaign
The I-STOP law was designed to regulate the distribution and tracking of prescription drugs. After reading an article about its signing and implementation, middle and high schoolers work together to come up with their own ideas for an...
Curated OER
Novel Study: The End of the Line
The End of the Line, Angela Cerrito's gripping novel about an adolescent murderer incarcerated in an unusual "school," is the subject of a comprehensive set of support materials. Chapter vocabulary and discussion questions are excerpted...
Curated OER
Heart of Darkness: List Group Label Strategy
Heart of Darkness can challenge even the best readers. Here's a pre-reading strategy that will engage class members and provide background and context for Conrad's study of racism, savagery and imperialism. Class members brainstorm,...
Prestwick House
Fahrenheit 451—Activity Pack
The burning questions is at what point do readers of Fahrenheit 451 recognize the many literary devices Ray Bradbury employs in his dystopian classic that warns of a society that uses media to indoctrinate the public and denigrates...
Reed Novel Studies
The Little Prince: Novel Study
Do our eyes play tricks on us? The Little Prince narrator begins with a discussion of the difference in what grown-ups and children see. Scholars read how he puts this to the test using a drawing and find synonyms to vocabulary...
ESL Kid Stuff
Easter Lesson
Get your young bunnies crafting and designing cards for Easter as they hunt for eggs, sing songs, and learn prepositions with a sweet activity.
Reed Novel Studies
Sing Down The Moon: Novel Study
Human trafficking has existed in many forms throughout history. Using a novel study of Sing Down the Moon by Scott O'Dell, readers learn the story of a young Native American girl taken into slavery. Reading comprehension and...