Invite your young writers to take the reins with writing dialogue. Using two characters of their own creation, kids work with partners and then individually to write short conversations.

Perry the penguin wants to buy a new scooter, but he doesn't have any funds! Walk your kids through the short book Less Than Zero, and have them track his borrowing, spending, and saving on a line graph while you read. Pupils will learn...

Poe goes high tech with a lesson plan that asks high schoolers to use the internet and various apps as they read and analyze "The Masque of the Red Death." In addition to responding to comprehension questions in Quizlet, they use...

Is losing cultural traditions the cost of social progress, or should people make stronger efforts to preserve these traditions? High schoolers watch a short film about the native Yup'ik people in Alaska and how they handle the shifts in...

Four projects enable class members to show what they have learned about ways they can stand up for democracy. to begin, individuals review their identity charts and craft a mask that represents themselves. Next, groups create a short,...

Odds are, most of the members of your class know someone who has been affected by breast cancer. Teach them more about prevention through healthy lifestyles, detection with self-testing and mammograms, and the most effective treatments...

Using the resource, scholars complete a mid-unit assessment to gauge their learning at the halfway point of the unit. Pupils read the myth "The Harvest That Never Came" and plot its narrative structure.

Set young readers on the path toward fluency with this phonemic awareness resource. Based on the award-winning children's book, Where the Wild Things Are, this lesson allows beginning readers to practice isolating...

Bloom's Taxonomy is a great way to address the many levels of comprehension. With explanations and examples of each level, you can create questions that focus on knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.

Authors are constantly leaving clues that help the reader to understand the sequence of events in a story. Teach young readers how to pick up on these key temporal words and phrases with this slide show. After an introduction to commonly...

Do you play any musical instruments? Consider using this question to interest readers in this short passage. Then, have them read the passage and answer the multiple-choice questions that follow. 

Students examine Shakespearean language. In this word study lesson, students investigate the meaning of words that Shakespeare invented. Students draw and pantomime with the words prior to writing short stories that feature Shakespeare's...

Students read and analyze Truman Capote's autobiographical short story, "A Christmas Memory." They discuss writing styles, conduct Internet research on Truman Capote, write a book review, and write a short story based on one of Truman...

Students read about one cross-class marriage and create scenes to dramatize interactions among the family members and consider how class shapes relationships. They imagine the issues faced by cross-class couples by writing a short story.

Students discover music that was inspired by the spooky and bizarre. In this music of Hector Berlioz and Camille Saint-Saens lesson, students identify elements of music and listen to the Symphonie Fantastique and Danse Macabre....

Students examine literary arts. In this Greek mythology lessons, students read Greek myths and select characters from the myths to study. Students create watercolor illustrations of the characters, write short stories about the...

Students reflect on the lives of older people they know, then research and debate the key issues surrounding scientific experimentation in anti-aging. They write a short story that reflects their own philosophical beliefs on aging and...

Students examine and discuss animal adaptation. They read an article about snakes, conduct research on ways animals adapt, develop a diagram, and write a short story written from the perspective of the animal they researched.

Learners test their memory recall and discuss its association to color. After reading an article, they discuss the natural and psycho-sociological significance of the color red. As a class, they participate in a mood-color association...

Students explore the relationship between an author's life and their work. Students research the historical and personal events surrounding a Nobel Prize winning author and how they are reflected in the author's writing. They create a...

Young scholars identify words that can be used to describe Mark Twain's character Tom Sawyer. Students explore stage production of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" by reading and discussing "An Older (and Calmer) Tom Sawyer". They develop...

Students explore how insects behave in their natural habitats and build dioramas to create an Insect World in their classroom. They investigate various insects and the roles they play in the environment. They write creative short...

In this reading instructional activity, students practice reading words with short /i/ by making an eight-page booklet. Students read the story about a tin man who plays baseball.

Elementary learners practice reading with expression to understand text better. They identify punctuation marks to see how each sentence is to be expressed with a certain emotion. Then they practice their new skills by working through...