The power of a picture. During the events surrounding World War I, propaganda posters were widely distributed in American society to sway the emotions of its citizens. By analyzing World War I propaganda posters in the first installment...

How does recognizing the author's purpose help you draw conclusions about a topic? Using two articles (both are attached), learners brainstorm why each author wrote each article. Are their purposes similar or different? Learners use a...

The toss of a die determines what questions your pupils will answer in this lesson. Learners respond to questions based on Bloom's taxonomy, discussing The Adventures of Tom Sawyer with classmates along the way. They finish by writing up...

Although the article that launches this lesson is about the history of the Periodic Table, the objective is reading comprehension. Using the eight-page informational text, learners answer five comprehension questions and craft one essay....

Scholars work in groups to compare Brown v. Board of Education excerpts and A Mighty Long Way. They use the Paired Text note catcher to organize their thoughts and divide the work using a jigsaw activity to track Carlotta's journey.

Concept muraling helps learners improve their comprehension of a text by giving them a way to organize their understanding of the key concepts in that text. Introduce readers to this process with a carefully scaffolded lesson that models...

A carefully crafted three-day lesson integrates poetry and visual art. By analyzing and comparing Langston Hughes' poem "Mother and Son" and Romare Bearden's collage "The Dove," readers explore the theme of hope. The lesson activates...

Gather some information, print it onto sentence strips, and then have your class physically shuffle the cards to better understand the importance of organizational patterns in writing. Middle school learners examine information for a...

Use the Visual Thesaurus to predict the subject matter of Rick Riordan's book The Lightning Thief. A pre-reading activity encourages middle schoolers to use context clues and word meaning to discover what the book is about. After...

Help your learners navigate the vocabulary of Shizuko's Daughter by Kyoko Mori with a instructional activity on categorizing words. After coming up with a list of things that grow from the earth, learners decide which categories...

A K-W-H-L chart is a great way to scaffold prior knowledge. As class members begin their reading of Out of the Dust, Karen Hesse’s 1998 Newbery Medal winning verse novel, they chart what they already know about the Great Depression...

What caused the collapse of the environment on Rapa Nui (Easter Island)? Who constructed the Moai? What was their purpose? Class members assume the role of investigators and use evidence drawn from field studies, ships' logs, and...

Read The Quicksand Book by Tomie dePaola while taking notes about the story.  Perform a read-aloud, and work your way through the text with your youngsters. With this plan, learners also write about ideas from a previous day, and...

A creative lesson shines a spotlight on Christmas celebrations throughout six different countries. Scholars read an informative text and share their new-found knowledge with their peers. After hearing about each country, pupils choose...

Young readers travel back to the time of the dinosaurs in this literature unit based on the story Dinosaurs Before Dark. Intended for use with upper-elementary special education students, this resource provides reading...

Seventh graders embark in discovery of basic facts about an assigned continent and are asked to organize their information into categories. The Five Themes model is taught and students reshuffle their information appropriately.

Organize the characters in Jane Yolen's The Devil's Arithmetic according to their shared character traits. After listing character traits as a class, kids note which characters exhibit particular characteristics with a...

Are you looking for a way to teach sequence of events in your narrative writing unit? Bring this lesson to your middle school class, as it prompts young writers to create a narrative sequence map of events that have happened at school...

Young researchers use the Internet or books to find out about colonial women during the American Revolution. They organize information in a graphic to demonstrate their understanding of the research they gathered before writing a...

Mail me a postcard. Individuals design a postcard to show what Meg Lowman from The Most Beautiful Roof in the World might have written to her friends at home. They then continue to work on writing a science journal entry.

Paul Langan's novel The Bully is the core text in a six-session unit plan that engages high schoolers in an in-depth examination of bullying and its effects on bullies, victims, and bystanders. The richly textured and carefully...

Imagine how the wolf would tell the tale of Little Red Riding Hood or The Three Little Pigs. Young writers re-imagine classic tales by adopting the point of view of another character in the story. After reading models like The True Story...

Students study questions and answers within a text to learn about writing structure and organization. For this writing structure lesson, students investigate books in class by asking questions for the text. Students then format their own...

Write what you know, sound advice for any writer and something many famous authors are known to have done. Use these materials to explore how Shakespeare's life influenced his plays. This resource is packed with readings, video segments,...