An American Childhood

A definitive resource for your figurative language unit includes several worksheets and activities to reinforce writing skills. It addresses poetic elements such as simile and metaphor, personification, hyperbole, and idioms, and...

Ready to integrate technology into your ELL instruction? Check out this reading instructional activity that has language learners using the Internet and apps, joining online book clubs, and creating blogs. A fine model of what can be done.

Encourage kids to think deeply about what they are reading with five thought-provoking questions about one passage. After choosing a passage that is intriguing or confusing to them, learners write a summary, explain what they like or...

Only a thorough understanding of history can save us from repeating it. Practice close reading skills with an eighth grade unit that focuses on 19th century America, including European immigration into Ellis Island and Frederick...

Even though readers investigate matters of the heart, this activity promotes the inner workings of learners' brains. The fifth lesson of six has the teacher first model the strategy to the class before having small groups practice. To...

Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address provides the text for a series of close reading exercises that model for instructors how carefully crafted guiding questions can help readers think critically about what they read, thus developing...

The 41 slides in a professional development seminar model how to use close reading techniques to examine the many layers of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. In addition to passages from the novel, slides provide biographical...

What better activity is there for summer than reading? Provide your pupils with 25 book ideas for their summer reading pursuits. A variety of different genres are represented on this list, and each book is paired with publication...

Accompany a reading of Madeleine L'Engle's classic tale, A Wrinkle in Time, with a detailed guide equipped with 15 informative and useful chapters. Scholars discover who the author is, why she wrote the book, and crucial story elements...

Reinforce understanding of five literary terms with a single-slide flow chart. Learners figure out if various words and phrases are examples of simile, metaphor, hyperbole, understatement, or personification.