A read-aloud of Patricia Polacco's Thank You, Mr. Falker helps promote deeper comprehension through questioning to achieve personal connections and discussions of character and theme.
Digging Deeper: Developing Comprehension Using Thank You, Mr. Falker
All About Alliteration: Responding to Literature Through a Poetry Link
Studied students stupefy! Students learn about alliteration by listening to an alliterative read-aloud and apply the knowledge they gain to the creation of their own poem and illustration.
Dynamite Diamante Poetry
Introduce gerunds and review nouns, adjectives, and verbs through engaging read-alouds; then apply these concepts through collaborative word-sorting and poetry-writing activities.
Integrating Language Arts: If You Give a Mouse a Cookie
This lesson integrates reading, writing, listening, and speaking to boost students' comprehension skills. Students explore Laura Joffe Numeroff 's If You Give a Mouse a Cookie using a variety of techniques, beginning with a picture walk and ending with the creation and publication of their own versions of the text.
The Connection Between Poetry and Music
Students won't miss a beat in this reading fluency lesson that combines music and poetry.
Building Classroom Community Through the Exploration of Acrostic Poetry
What do your students think about each other? Find out as you teach them the concepts of acrostic poems and challenge them to write an uplifting acrostic about a classmate.
Word Study with Henry and Mudge
Henry and Mudge is used in this lesson to build students' word recognition through rereading, high-frequency word banks, word studies, and writing.
Theme Poems: Writing Extraordinary Poems About Ordinary Objects
Students select a familiar object online, build a bank of words related to the object, and write theme poems that are printed and displayed in class.
Teaching Shapes Using Read-Alouds, Visualization, and Sketch to Stretch
Visual clues in winter-themed books used in this lesson encourage students to make real-world math connections.
Skimming and Scanning: Using Riddles to Practice Fact Finding Online
Students will learn to skim and scan to make sure they don't flounder when they're surfing the Internet for facts to help them complete riddles about the United States.
Combining Read-Alouds With Economics in the Primary Grades
Students learn that what you read in books can really add up when they analyze literary texts for economic concepts.
Story Elements Alive!
What's in a narrative? Students find out in this lesson in which they explore four narrative elements—setting, characters, problem/solution, and plot, through purpose-driven read-alouds and independent reading.
Reading, Writing, Haiku Hiking! A Class Book of Picturesque Poems
Students learn haiku
write descriptive poems
and share with the class.
Family Ties: Making Connections to Improve Reading Comprehension
Families are all about connections between people. In this lesson, students read three books about different families and make text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections to those texts.
Using Greeting Cards to Motivate Students and Enhance Literacy Skills
Imagination and illustration are the key in this lesson in which students read and create their own greeting cards.
BioBags: Linking Literature and Life
Students create BioBags, a collection of texts that mark special times in their lives. BioBags provide a way for students to share a variety of events and texts.
Using Pictures to Build Schema for Social Studies Content
How do you read an image? Students find out in this lesson in which they "read" several images of the Boston Massacre to better understand the event and recognize effects of propaganda.
Shared Experiences, Individual Impressions: Buddies Create PowerPoint Stories
Stories and snapshots of school-related experiences are the perfect sources of inspiration for students as they create PowerPoint presentations with the help of an older student.
Let's Read It Again: Comprehension Strategies for English-Language Learners
Help Spanish-speaking English-language learners unlock the mysteries of their new language by using a bilingual book to recognize unfamiliar words and construct meaning from the text.
Writers' Workshop: The Biographical Sketch
Students use the faces and places they learn about in their research to write a biography about a contemporary or historical figure.