Students create a personalized biography for their reading buddy, and each child is the author, illustrator, and editor.
Book Buddy Biographies: Intermediate and Primary Students Working Together
Giant Story Problems: Reading Comprehension through Math Problem-Solving
Students create posters using images, text, and mathematical equations to represent a story problem.
Book Sorting: Using Observation and Comprehension to Categorize Books
Students utilize their reading and writing skills as they think critically in order to sort books in multiple ways.
Draw a Math Story: From the Concrete to the Symbolic
Students create math stories by first drawing, then writing, and finally using math symbols to show addition or subtraction.
Creating Class Rules: A Beginning to Creating Community
Students work together to create classroom rules by brainstorming why they are at school and what they need while they are there.
Guess What's in the Bag: A Language-based Activity
Students play a guessing game to practice using descriptive language.
Dr. Seuss's Sound Words: Playing with Phonics and Spelling
Boom! Br-r-ring! Cluck! Moo!Everywhere you turn, you find exciting sounds. Students use these sounds to write their own poems based on Dr. Seuss's Mr. Brown Can MOO! Can You?
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.
It Doesn't Have to End That Way: Using Prediction Strategies with Literature
After listening to the beginning of a story, students use details in the text, personal experience, and prior knowledge to predict the way the story will end.
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.
Using Children's Natural Curiosity to Lead to Descriptive Writing
Inspired by the book It Begins with an A, kindergarten students are invited to turn their curiosity and guesswork into a class book, complete with illustrated objects and descriptive language
Composing Cinquain Poems: A Quick-Writing Activity
Students use themed graphic organizers to compose cinquain poems on topics common in the early elementary classroom.
Literature Circles with Primary Students Using Self-Selected Reading
Students respond to self-selected books in journals, and talk about their books daily in small groups. The teacher guides students by offering suggestions and writing with them in dialogue journals.
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.
Listen, Look, and Learn: An Information-Gathering Process
After listening to and discussing the story Score One for the Sloths, primary students research the sloth. Students use a variety of resources, including an information wheel graphic organizer.
Rosa Parks was born on this day in 1913.
Rosa Parks was committed to the struggle for social justice and human rights until her death, inspiring millions of people around the world. Today, we celebrate her!
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.
Doodle Splash
Doodle Splash combines the process of drawing with analytical thinking by pairing online drawing with writing prompts that encourage students to make connections between their visual designs and the text.
Comic Creator
The Comic Creator invites students to compose their own comic strips for a variety of contexts (prewriting, pre- and postreading activities, response to literature, and so on).