Curated OER
Around The Town
Students participate in alphabetizing letters, coming up with questions and concepts, and show the rules of phonics by playing a game for a unit opener. In this language arts lesson plan, students also come up with thinking maps.
Curated OER
Dinofours My Seeds Won't Grow
Students listen to a read aloud, Dinofours My Seeds Won't Grow. They talk about what plants need to grow and study the parts of plants. They discuss what types of plants we eat after which they plant a seed in order to observe the growth...
Curated OER
Camera Investigations
Students listen to a read aloud, participate in word work and work with video clips at a website. They make a zoetrope to demonstrate animation.
Curated OER
A True Story Appalachia
Learners engage in a reading activity to learn about the Appalachia Mountains. The use of literature is important to provide context for the geography lesson. This lesson is strong because it allows the teacher to teach across the...
Curated OER
What Is the Bill of Rights?
Young scholars discuss the purpose of the Bill of Rights and the United States Constitution. In groups, they write about the ten amendments and their purpose. They re-word the Amendments in their own way and answer discussion questions...
Curated OER
Learning to Share
Students participate in a instructional activity/activity where they learn to share their toys and crayons. They listen to a short story about sharing read aloud by the teacher to the students. They discuss the questions in the story...
Curated OER
Reading and Responding
Fourth graders read and respond to poetry. They identify the author's purpose and connect the literature to their personal experiences. Students critically analyze the poem and write a poem of their own.
Curated OER
Creative Writing
Fourth graders participate in an observation hike in this lesson. They orally share observations from their hike, and develop a paragraph in a shared writing exercise. Finally, the write their paragraph about process writing in their...
Curated OER
Social Studies: A Ticket to Japan
Fourth graders create Venn diagrams to compare and contrast life in the United States and Japan. While the teacher holds up word cards, they decide where to categorize them under Japan, the U.S., or both. As students assemble their...
Curated OER
Unique Monique: Building a Community of Unique Individuals
Students recognize that each student is unique and has special talents. Students develop a puzzle piece that describes them and their particular talents. Students share their pieces and post on a bulletin board.
Curated OER
Noisy Nora, Studious Students: Story Elements
Alliterative adjective nicknames generate stories inspired by Rosemary Wells' book Noisy Nora (also a thematic complement to any class with children who make a ruckus to get attention). Class members explore basic story elements --...
Curated OER
War Literature
Working in groups, young historians review a war poem written by Stephen Crane. After reviewing the poem, they present an oral interpretation of the poem and hold a panel discussion about their analysis. The panel is made up of five or...
Curated OER
Author's Purpose
How do you determine an author’s purpose? You ask the author, of course. Invite a local journalist into the class to respond to scripted student questions about his/her writing process. A review of basic classroom etiquette is also...
Scholastic
Summarizing: Using Hand Motions for Key Words or Points
Learning to summarize texts takes practice. Jump into the training ring and guide your learners through a summarizing practice session. The classic direct instructional practice of "I do, you do, we do" is used to help them identify key...
Curated OER
Emmett Till: A Classroom Sonnet
Who is Emmet Till? An important historical figure, your kids will be shocked by his story! Discover the details of his life and collaborate to write a crown of sonnets in the style of Marilyn Nelson.
Curated OER
The Keeping Quilt
Students discover story analysis by discussing a book the class reads together. In this reading comprehension lesson plan, students read the book The Keeping Quilt and discuss the different characters and plot points among the...
Curated OER
Action Verbs
Fourth graders write a sentence for the verb on the index card they receive to increase their knowledge of action verbs. They then orally identify the verbs in the sentences from the index cards when read aloud and complete the Action...
Curated OER
SWOOP Reading
First graders read fluently. For this phonics lesson students practice reading strategies for fluency. They write a response in their journal about the book read in class.
Curated OER
I Can't Hear You
Students practice reading silently to become better readers. They each read a copy of the book, "Mr. Cricket takes a Vacation," from Carousel Readers. Each student explains why if everyone read aloud in class how distracting it would be...
Curated OER
Focus Story: The Mitten
Students explore language arts by analyzing a story with their classmates. In this poetry identification lesson, students read the book The Mittens and identify the characters, plot and settings in the story. Students recite poems about...
Curated OER
Costa Rican Ecosystems
Students read about the Cloud Forests in Costa Rica and then answer critical thinking questions about how to prevent loss in this forest and how to slow down global warming.
Curated OER
What's All the Buzz About?
Young scholars discuss why we should be kind to one another. In this social skills instructional activity, students read and respond to a story about how saying mean things can hurt someone's feelings.
Curated OER
My Spacecraft to Saturn
Students discover problems that NASA must deal with on a daily basis. They work together to think of solutions and sketch their own idea of a spacecraft. They discover the concept of engineering.
Curated OER
San Francisco, Ahoy!
Fifth graders analyze paintings that share a common theme of San Francisco as seen by some of the first travelers who arrived there. In this art history lesson plan, 5th graders consider the experiences involved with the arrival to a new...