Students engage in a rich study of vocabulary words from the song "America the Beautiful," using music and art.
"America the Beautiful": Using Music and Art to Develop Vocabulary
Involving Students and Families in Ongoing Reflection and Assessment
Students begin by writing a sentence or two each week and progress to daily reflections and records of their school activity. Families respond to these student reflections, which become the basis for discussion among family, teacher, and students.
Collaborating on a Class Book: Exploring Before-During-After Sequences
Students and the teacher produce a class book through a group-writing activity, focusing on a basic before-during-after sequence of events.
Living the Dream: 100 Acts of Kindness
This lesson provides the "action piece" for any study of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In this project, students participate in Dr. King's dream by doing 100 acts of kindness.
Martin Luther King, Jr. and Me: Identifying with a Hero
This lesson provides ideas for celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr. Day by encouraging students to explore the connections between Dr. King and themselves through journaling and inquiry-based research.
Persuasive Writing: What Can Writing in Family Message Journals Do for Students?
This lesson engages children in using writing to their families as a persuasive tool to get what they want and need.
Family Message Journals Teach Many Purposes for Writing
This lesson encourages children to explore authentic reasons for writing by writing messages to their family in a family message journal.
Launching Family Message Journals
This lesson introduces Family Message Journalsa teacher-tested tool for encouraging family involvement and supporting writing to reflect and to learn.
Have Journal...Will Travel: Promoting Family Involvement in Literacy
Students build positive memories of literacy activities when they take turns taking home a book bag stuffed with items to encourage literacy interactions with their families.
Read Across America Day: Celebrate a Nation of Diverse Readers
Bring the celebration of reading and literacy into your classroom, library, school, and home all year long.
Theme Poems
Formerly known as Shape Poems, this online tool allows elementary students to write poems in various shapes.
Teaching Audience Through Interactive Writing
Through interactive writing, students work together and then independently to create invitation letters for a group of their peers and their families.
Let's Build a Snowman
In this lesson, students use both fiction and nonfiction texts, the Internet, and a K-W-L chart to learn about how animals survive the winter.
Telling a Story About Me: Young Children Write Autobiographies
Students tell their life stories in this lesson about autobiographies based on family photographs.
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.
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.
Celebrate the National Day on Writing®!
Students examine the different ways that they write and think about the role writing plays in life.
Take part in the African American Read-In!
Students come together with family and friends to take part in a read-in of books by African American authors and report their results.
Celebrate National Family Literacy Day!
Parents, grandparents, and other family members are invited to the classroom for a family-school reading day.
It's Winter in the Northern Hemisphere!
Students brainstorm words or images that they associate with winter, select and read a picture book about winter, and compare the two using the interactive Venn Diagram.