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.
Fact or Fiction: Learning About Worms Using Diary of a Worm
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.
Shared Poetry Reading: Teaching Print Concepts, Rhyme, and Vocabulary
The rhyme and reason behind this lesson is that students will need to develop important reading skills to increase their reading fluency.
Teaching About Story Structure Using Fairy Tales
From "once upon a time" to "happily ever after," students learn to recognize story structure in fairy tales and create a logical sequence of events when writing original stories.
Word Study with Henry and Mudge
Henry and Mudge is used in this lesson to build students' word recognition through rereading, high-frequency word banks, word studies, and writing.
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.
Using Greeting Cards to Motivate Students and Enhance Literacy Skills
Imagination and illustration are the key in this lesson in which students read and create their own greeting cards.
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.
Cowboys and Castles: Interacting With Fractured Texas Tales
What do cowboy hats have to do with fairy tales? Two traditional fairy tales and their Texas-based counterparts set the stage for five different ways to respond to text.
Using a Predictable Text to Teach High-Frequency Words
After reading an engaging yet predictable text about a child looking for his cat, students use a similar format and high-frequency words to craft tales about their own lost pets.
From Fact to Fiction: Drawing and Writing Stories
Students gather factual information about frogs and toads to create nonfiction and fiction stories. Drawing is used for prewriting.
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.
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.
The Frog Beyond the Fairy Tale Character: Searching Informational Texts
Frogs often appear as the main character in fiction stories, but what do students really know about frogs? Students find out in this lesson in which they research real-life frogs.
Story Map
The Story Map interactive is designed to assist students in prewriting and postreading activities by focusing on the key elements of character, setting, conflict, and resolution.
CD/DVD Cover Creator
The CD/DVD Cover Creator allows users to type and illustrate CD and DVD covers and related booklets for liner notes and other information. Students can use the tool to create covers for books, music, and films that they explored as well as to create covers for media they compose individually or as a class.
Postcard Creator
The Postcard Creator helps students learn to identify all the typical parts of a postcard, and then generate their own postcard messages by typing information into letter templates. After printing their texts, students can illustrate the front of their postcards in a variety of ways, including drawing, collage, and stickers.
Book Cover Creator
The Book Cover Creator is designed to allow users to type and illustrate front book covers, front and back covers, and full dust jackets. Students can use the tool to create new covers for books that they read as well as to create covers for books they write individually or as a class.
The Charlotte Huck Award for Outstanding Fiction for Children is announced today.
Students read and discuss an award-winning book before writing their own story that demonstrates compassion.
Today is St. Patrick's Day.
St. Patrick's Day is celebrated by reading Irish folk tales and using the Story Cube tool to create a graphic organizer and see what characteristics are unique to Irish tales.