Students explore the role of prefixes, as well as their origins and meanings, and examine how the understanding of prefixes can improve comprehension, decoding, and spelling.

What makes you happy? What makes you sad? Connecting words to feelings enriches vocabulary and helps with concept development.

In an effort to help motivate students to read nonfiction, students are challenged to use a timeline to help them name the year when certain products were invented.

Students take a walk on the wild side when they develop an understanding of nonfiction texts with hands-on experiences and intense analysis.

Students engage in writing workshop, using a timeline to focus in on and write about a specific event.

Students practice with words and develop both definitional and contextual knowledge through two agents—purposeful sequencing of steps and collaboration with peers.

Use an engaging, authentic text to build students' knowledge of phonic elements and give them a taste of Japanese culture.

Students read Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis, demonstrate comprehension of the story by involving themselves in discussions, and analyze the characters in preparation for a class "press conference."

Students sing a popular children's song, follow along with a picture book that contains the lyrics and illustrations, and then participate in activities to reinforce learning of the vocabulary words.

Students identify interesting words from Shakespeare's plays and add them to a classroom vocabulary collection.

Graphic organizers assist the development of comparative vocabulary and generate discussions of analogy and metaphor in art as students go on a real or virtual tour of an art gallery.

Students learn about sentences by listing verbs, nouns, and adjectives. They use word cards to create descriptive sentences and work in groups to create the longest sentences they can.

Students demonstrate their letter/sound knowledge by working with name cards and sharing observations about their classmates' names, giving teachers an opportunity to assess knowledge in a meaningful context.

Students read and analyze fairy tales from several cultures, identifying common elements. Choosing common situations, students write original fairy tales, using picture books as models and a peer review process.

Introduce students to the idea that movies and TV have their own language and grammar, which gives them special ways of telling their stories.

What if students could see the relevance of their school curriculum to real-world, interesting, STEM-related careers? Let's help them create a great future!

Using various reading strategies and resources, students explore the issue of food waste. They also create persuasive arguments and blog posts examining this topic.

This minilesson encourages children to seek out and appropriately react to nutrition labels and to make healthy food choices, integrating science, math, health, and literacy.

Students in grades 4–8 activate prior knowledge and research information about a historic event through fiction and nonfiction literature and exploration of relevant websites.

In this minilesson, students practice identifying and purposefully using vocabulary in persuasive writing that is intended to have an emotional impact on the reader.