Explore fantasy as a genre. After working in small groups to identify literary elements in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis, class members share their work and then use the presentations to help them prepare to write...

How do you write an interesting beginning, middle, and end of a story? With this instructional activity, young writers look to other stories as examples. Then, they use some of the attached graphic organizers to help them create their...

Greek Revival architecture and the Civil Rights Movement? Sure! Examine how the Lyceum and Circle, two historic buildings located on the campus of the University of Mississippi, relate to integration and the 1962 riot on the university...

Students examine how to model story telling for their classes. They investigate how to learn, rehearse and share stories.

Use this lesson to focus on a compare and contrast writing structure in your middle school language arts class. Here, young writers compare and contrast two texts using graphic organizers. They use a double bubble format for their...

Personal narrative writing is usually a favorite form of writing for youngsters because they get to write about a personal experience. The lesson here asks pupils to take a piece of narrative writing and improve it by following...

Show your young researchers how to find information, brainstorm a topic, map or outline their own stories, and create rough drafts. This lesson also shows learners how to peer edit, conference with the teacher, and write their final...

To better understand how to compose a clear and well-organized paper, learners read short passages, write summaries, and make colored graphic organizers. This is a fully developed three-day lesson with suggested assessments.

Students read a Japanese Noh play and discuss its structure and traditional characters. They choose a short myth and write a Noh play based on it.

Students engage in lesson concerned with the concept of the ozone layer. They write a reflective journal using prior knowledge. Students read sources of information about the existence of a hole in the ozone layer. Finally they create...

Imagine a day in the life of a child who has to work 12-14 hours a day, seven days a week. After viewing images and reading stories of child laborers, class members select an image and write a richly detailed narrative about a typical...

What would you do if you had to go to school all day every day? Tillie tackles this problem in Sharon Creech’s A Fine, Fine School. After a discussion of how Tillie got the principal to change his ways, brainstorm with your class...

Students listen to a story read by their teacher and identify the pictures inside it to be real or make believe. In this fiction and non fiction lesson plan, students also write a real or make believe story of their own.

Fourth graders investigate visual imagery to aid reading comprehension. In this reading strategies lesson, 4th graders discover how visual imagery helps in comprehending a story. Students use a reader's notebook to record connections.

How is Louisiana connected to the Holocaust? After reading The Diary of Anne Frank, eighth graders complete a research report about a survivor of the Holocaust who currently resides in Louisiana. Though the idea is a good way to...

There is nothing more frustrating than discussing theme in literature, and now the Common Core requires that your learners determine two or more, and discuss the development of it throughout the text. This is crazy, but manageable with...

The lessons that come from reading the novel Buddy by Nigel Hinton might be masked by how much you have just enjoyed the story, but don’t let an opportunity for learning pass you by. Let this learning scheme bring clarity to the ideas...

Use this roaring 1920s history lesson to have young writers research primary and secondary sources. They use their research to examine the events or famous public figures of the time period. Next, they imagine they're in the 1920s and...

Bring to life the severity of the Espionage and Sedition Acts through a mock trial. Learners have prior knowledge of WWI and the context of these acts. An anticipatory set gets the class discussing the ethics of wartime dissension, and...

First graders are read a story about the various stages of matter with a focus on gases. Using a ziploc bag, they capture as much air as possible and discuss how it takes up space even though it is invisible. To end the lesson, they blow...

Students create their own telenovelas. In this telenovela lesson, students use the graphic organizer to work in groups and create a telenovela based on the mysterious letter.

Get your young writers outside of the traditional essay writing mode with Free Write Friday. Free Write Friday encourages your class to use personal experiences or knowledge to write more creative pieces. Young writers could experiment...

Hit all the basics with this lesson, focusing on weather, greetings, and dates! Start by singing a weather related song ("Quel temps fait-il by Barbara MacArthur is suggested), and then read a story about getting ready for school. The...

Build the skills your budding authors need to develop to compose well-structured paragraphs. Give them the topic sheet (included here), and have them write a cohesive paragraph using the ideas listed. Consider having them include two...