A big green monster helps students build their reading fluency and word recognition skills through choral reading, literacy center activities, and writing stories.
The Big Green Monster Teaches Phonics in Reading and Writing
Catching the Bug for Reading Through Interactive Read-Alouds
Students learn about story structure, new vocabulary, and a variety of reading strategies by participating in an interactive read-aloud of Miss Bindergarten Stays Home From Kindergarten by Joseph Slate.
Weather: A Journey in Nonfiction
Questions about weather clear up when students use what they learned from their books to create a presentation to share with the rest of the class.
Diagram It! Identifying, Comparing, and Writing About Nonfiction Texts
Students compare the traits fact and fiction by using a Venn diagram to compare fiction and nonfiction books about Native Americans.
Fact or Fiction: Learning About Worms Using Diary of a Worm
Students often believe that fiction writers make everything up, seldom realizing how research worms its way into entertaining writing. In this lesson, students read Diary of a Worm to find out how fact merges with fiction.
Readers Theatre With Jan Brett
Students in grades 1-2 use Jan Brett's Hedgie's Surprise for a Readers Theatre experience.
Junie B. Jones Introduces Literacy Mystery Boxes
Like Junie B. Jones, students will be saying "Wait till you hear this" after listening to a Junie B. story and creating mystery boxes to help retell the story.
Predicting and Gathering Information With Nonfiction Texts
Students take a walk on the wild side when they develop an understanding of nonfiction texts with hands-on experiences and intense analysis.
Learning Vocabulary Down By the Bay
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.
Amelia Bedelia Up Close! Closely Reading a Classic Story
Through a close reading of Amelia Bedelia, students reread the material to discuss text-dependent questions, promoting deep thinking about the text and its characters.
Picture Understanding! Building Comprehension in the Primary Grades With Picture Books
Students move from modeled to independent comprehension of fiction stories by using texts by Jan Brett and interactive tools that demonstrate their comprehension.
Using American Sign Language to Improve Comprehension and Vocabulary
American Sign Language is combined with the hilarious poetry and pictures of Sam's Sandwich, a lift-the-flap book, to engage all types of learners in acquiring key vocabulary.
Shhh! Bear's Sleeping: Learning About Nonfiction and Fiction Using Read-Alouds
Students explore the distinction between the fiction story Bear Snores On and the nonfiction book Every Autumn Comes the Bear.
Digging Deeper: Developing Comprehension Using Thank You, Mr. Falker
A read-aloud of Patricia Polacco's Thank You, Mr. Falker helps promote deeper comprehension through questioning to achieve personal connections and discussions of character and theme.
Integrating Language Arts: If You Give a Mouse a Cookie
This lesson integrates reading, writing, listening, and speaking to boost students' comprehension skills. Students explore Laura Joffe Numeroff 's If You Give a Mouse a Cookie using a variety of techniques, beginning with a picture walk and ending with the creation and publication of their own versions of the text.
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.
Combining Read-Alouds With Economics in the Primary Grades
Students learn that what you read in books can really add up when they analyze literary texts for economic concepts.
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.
Let's Read It Again: Comprehension Strategies for English-Language Learners
Help Spanish-speaking English-language learners unlock the mysteries of their new language by using a bilingual book to recognize unfamiliar words and construct meaning from the text.
Read a Song: Using Song Lyrics for Reading and Writing
This lesson will be music to the students' ears when they hear that they get to read song lyrics and compose original lyrics for a familiar song.