Students learn about the life and music of John Lennon, write a short story from their lives integrating lyrics from some of their favorite songs, and create a class book of stories.

Students use illustrations from The Mysteries of Harris Burdick as a guide to write mysteries and then present their stories to the class for students to discuss to which illustration each story corresponds.

Using different writing/drawing materials (e.g., markers, color pencils, pastels, etc.), students learn how to communicate different moods and/or feelings to support their written ideas and how authors do the same through their work.

Groups of students read and discuss American folklore stories, each group reading a different story. Using a jigsaw strategy, the groups compare character traits and main plot points of the stories. A diverse selection of American folk tales is used for this lesson, which is adaptable to any text set.

In this lesson, students read Henry and Mudge and the Starry Night as a whole group as the teacher models a questioning strategy. In subsequent sessions, students practice the questioning strategy and reread for fluency.

Students create a checklist outlining what effective writers do, revise his or her own writing, and engage in a written conversation to help peers with the revision process.

Students explore book covers of a variety of books then create a new cover for a book they have read.

This lesson, in which students research worms in order to create a classroom habitat, incorporates reading and writing across content areas as well as math and science activities.

Students select what they believe to be the most important word in a text that they have read and justify their choice using examples from the text.

In small groups, students closely examine one sentence from the Gettysburg Address and create a multigenre project communicating what they have discovered about the meaning and significance of the text.

Students write persuasive letters to their librarian requesting that specific texts be added to the school library. As they work, students plan their arguments and outline their reasons and examples.

Students interview family members, and then create graphic family timelines based on important and memorable family events.

In this graphical mapping project, students assign a value to the events, characters, and themes in a novel and think about how the elements of the story are all interconnected.

The list of ten things about Opal's absent mother that her father shares in Because of Winn-Dixie serves as inspiration for students to create their own lists describing literary characters.

Students write an owner's manual that helps them get to know their classroom, provides them with a sense of ownership, and lets others know about their classroom.

Students read and analyze fairy tales, identifying their common elements. They then write their own "fractured" fairy tales by changing one of the literary elements found in the original.

In this lesson, students build classroom community by exploring environmental print and a teacher-created display that focuses on a favorite book. They then create and share their own presentations.

Students plant a garden and study its growth using the inquiry process of questioning and exploring. As they research and study, students record their observations in a field journal.

Students create alphabet books, which are used as an integrated assessment with science, health, social studies, and any other content area. This lesson plans looks at the theme of community.

This lesson uses Ben's Dream by Chris Van Allsburg to highlight ten major landmarks of the world. Students research the landmarks and present their findings to the class.