You don't have to slay the dragon in this activity. Young writers review poetic devices with a set of worksheets about alliteration and similes. Once they finish waxing poetic about their dragon friends, they craft a final...

Explore primary and secondary sources in this historical analysis lesson. Young researchers define the terms primary source and secondary source. They read a primary source document provided by the teacher and answer questions about...

Help your class use critical thinking when it comes to unfamiliar words. With vocabulary from Kyoko Mori's Shizuko's Daughter, kids write the word in the center of a graphic organizer, and find its category, comparisons,...

Here is a lesson plan which may be best suited for a library science teacher, or one that can be done by a regular teacher when in the library. In it, learners explore the best ways to use print and electronic resources to find...

After watching the documentary Dark Water about a traditional Chumash ceremony and reading a Chumash origin story, viewers are asked to create a coat of arms and to craft an essay that details a family tradition or their own origin story.

There's no such thing as an unlimited resource. Scholars complete a mid-unit assessment by reading A Limited Supply. They answer text-dependent questions and complete a graphic organizer about key terms in the text.

Learning to use the dictionary is a long-term investment in good spelling. scholars practice writing compound nouns, look them up in the dictionary, and write the guide words from the dictionary page where they were found. I'd extend it...

Use online dictionaries to define vocabulary words and create a visualization of word meanings through digital art. Middle schoolers go online to define assigned vocabulary words. They visualize the meanings of the words in photo...

Students write and contribute one page for a class picture dictionary. They discuss how to alphabetize words, and examine both regular and picture dictionaries and how they are organized. Next they create a page for the class dictionary...

Second graders read and perform a reader's theater version of the story, "Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain." They complete a graphic organizer of cause and effect of their part in the story, look up vocabulary words on a dictionary...

In this dictionary vocabulary instructional activity, students locate the 9 listed words in the dictionary. They write a definition for the word, and write a notation of the page number where the word was found. Words include help,...

For this ESL dictionary use worksheet, students look up a list of word that are related to sleep such as drowsy, nap, siesta, and sleepwalking. They place the 8 words in the appropriate places in a cloze paragraph

How do you know when to use a semicolon versus a colon? Middle and high schoolers choose between a colon and a semicolon to correctly punctuate sentences. They must complete 10 sentences, either electronically or on a printout.

What do the words alligator, armadillo, and cockroach all have in common? Each one is an English word with Spanish origins. Introduce young etymologists to the joys of discovering word origins with a lesson that asks them to create a...

Fifth graders will use a dictionary to complete 5 charts organizing words by their roots and affixes. This worksheet is 4 pages long, and is a great way to help students better understand how to glean the meaning of a word by knowing its...

In this identifying the base words worksheet, students read two columns of words and write their root words, use a dictionary to find new words that use the root words from the word list, and read common prefixes and create new words...

Students build a list of gardening vocabulary from prior knowledge of gardens. In this gardening lesson, students understand the importance of gardens to humans and animals for food, shelter, and air. Students discuss the garden in...

Third graders determine the meaning of the words in the Pledge of Allegiance. In this dictionary usage lesson, 3rd graders, working in pairs, look up specific words from the Pledge. They make posters of the definitions they obtain by...

Third graders examine the concept of alphabetizing. They develop a class dictionary, creating definitions of themselves, and typing in their names, pronunciation, and the definitions, and inserting their picture into their document.

Eschew obfuscation! Using dictionaries, writers revise a complicated text so that it reads more simply and improves the clarity of the passage. Focusing on word meanings, they revise the sample worksheets and then present their...

Practice physical education vocabulary in your classroom. Working with language arts teachers, learners use dictionary skills to define and explain a word dealing with a concept in physical education. They also complete a task and have...

If you could travel anywhere in the United States, where would you go? Use this question to interest your fourth, fifth, and sixth graders as they experiment with Mapquest or other direction-based resources. They choose where they'd like...

Build creative writing skills through a project centered around a street name. Young writers start by creating a unique street name and brainstorming what life might be like on that street before writing a descriptive piece about this...

Warm up your class at the start of the year by checking their ability to read and unpack dictionary entries. This worksheet asks pupils to pick apart a sentence that uses some pretty advanced vocabulary by using three dictionary...