Students use their emerging writing skills to write shopping lists. They work within a budget, use problem-solving skills to create lists, and buy their favorite treats at the class store.

This lesson encourages students to use rhyming words to write rebus poetry modeled on rebus books, which substitute pictures for the words that young students cannot yet identify or decode.

This lesson engages children in using writing to their families as a persuasive tool to get what they want and need.

This lesson encourages children to explore authentic reasons for writing by writing messages to their family in a family message journal.

This lesson introduces Family Message Journals—a teacher-tested tool for encouraging family involvement and supporting writing to reflect and to learn.

Students learn about sentences by listing verbs, nouns, and adjectives. They use word cards to create descriptive sentences and work in groups to create the longest sentences they can.

Students demonstrate their letter/sound knowledge by working with name cards and sharing observations about their classmates' names, giving teachers an opportunity to assess knowledge in a meaningful context.

Students learn that what you read in books can really add up when they analyze literary texts for economic concepts.

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.

Students will find that learning onset and rime is a handy skill when they read the Jack and Jill rhyme.

Students will need their language-building hard hats as they construct words using onset and rime, building vocabulary and phonics comprehension.