The game Bingo is transformed in this lesson in which students use symbols and images to make connections to environmental print through the use of personalized Bingo cards.
Bingo! Using Environmental Print to Practice Reading
Using Picture Books to Explore Identity, Stereotyping, and Discrimination
Students analyze the concepts of identity, stereotyping, and discrimination by reading picture books; identify how these concepts are dealt with in each book; and discuss concrete actions to stop discrimination.
Reading Informational Texts Using the 3-2-1 Strategy
Students can count on using the 3-2-1 strategy to help them successfully comprehend and write about an informational text.
Stop Signs, McDonald's, and Cheerios: Writing With Environmental Print
Students use logos from everyday life to identify individual letters and then create their own captions for the images.
My Life/Your Life: A Look at Your Parents' Past
Past and present come together when students interview their parents and create a skit that compares their parents' experiences as middle schoolers with the students' own lives.
Blast Off! Vocabulary Instruction Using a Virtual Moon Trip
3, 2, 1... Blast off! Students learn new vocabulary by taking a virtual field trip to the moon, read-alouds, creating a picture dictionary, and completing a final writing activity.
Play Ball! Encouraging Critical Thinking Through Baseball Questions
Cooperation and critical thinking are the name of the game as students use baseball facts they find online to create trivia questions for a class Jeopardy game.
Action ABC's: Learning Vocabulary With Verbs
Creating an illustrated alphabet book of action words, from attack to zap, reinforces the definition of verbs as it stretches and expands students' vocabulary.
Choosing the Right Book: Strategies for Beginning Readers
Students make purposeful choices for their reading materials, thinking about their reasons for reading a book and using strategies to match books to their abilities.
Exploring Author's Voice Using Jane Addams Award-Winning Books
History has many faces in this lesson in which students read Jane Addams Award-winning books to learn about peace, social justice, world community, and equality.
Comparing Electronic and Print Texts About the Civil War Soldier
Which side will win as students investigate both sides of the battle of using print versus online text for research as they learn about the lives of Civil War soldiers?
Postmodern Picture Books in Middle School
Students analyze the structure of a postmodern picture book, Black and White, to uncover how authors create unexpected plots and connections and form relationships between words and illustrations.
Using Folk Tales: Vowel Influences on the Letter G
Gentle, gigantic, gracefuldo these g words describe the giant in Jack and the Beanstalk? Students will explore the hard and soft g sounds by studying fairy tales and animals.
Cosmic Oranges: Observation and Inquiry Through Descriptive Writing and Art
Students will eat up this lesson about oranges as they practice the skills that help them investigate and make detailed observations for descriptive purposes.
Student of the Day: Create Sound/Letter Understanding With Names
Name games make learning letters fun and interactive in this lesson where students get to know more about each other as they spell out their classmates' names.
A Journal for Corduroy: Responding to Literature
Connect home and school, literature and life, as students take a storybook character home with them and take turns writing stories about his visit.
Dynamic Duo Text Talks: Examining the Content of Internet Sites
An Observation and Inquiry Sheet guides students as they analyze and compare their reactions to the value, engagement, and credibility of three websites related to Anne Frank and the Holocaust.
The Reading Performance: Understanding Fluency Through Oral Interpretation
Students discuss prosody, gain a new appreciation for literature intended for oral performance, and participate in activities that instill the value of technology in shaping their appreciation of literature.
Text Talk: Julius, the Baby of the World
Students are asked to "talk" with Kevin Henkes' Julius, the Baby of the World by using open-ended questions to help them interpret the language, plot, and characters of the story.
The Big Bad Wolf: Analyzing Point of View in Texts
Was the Big Bad Wolf really all that bad? This lesson encourages students to analyze multiple viewpoints, view texts from different angles, and recognize gaps in narrative.