Stories and snapshots of school-related experiences are the perfect sources of inspiration for students as they create PowerPoint presentations with the help of an older student.
Shared Experiences, Individual Impressions: Buddies Create PowerPoint Stories
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.
Whose Shoes? Using Artifacts to Teach Reading and Rhyming Patterns
If the shoe fits… Actually, any shoe will fit this lesson, and the Artifact Analysis Questions provided will help students see it in a whole new way. Several rhyming texts take the shoe theme a step further, and introduce activities to increase students' awareness of rhyming words.
Safety Tips With Officer Buckle and Gloria
Safety first! In this lesson, students take the lessons taught by Officer Buckle and Gloria to heart as they explore safety in everyday situations.
Casting Shadows Across Literacy and Science
Shadows, shadows, everywhere! In this lesson, students read fiction, informational text, and poetry about shadows to extend their knowledge of the concept before casting their own shadow poetry.
Reading and Writing About Whales Using Fiction and Nonfiction Texts
Students will have a whale of a good time in this lesson in which they use fiction and nonfiction texts to write a letter to an online scientist.
Phonic Generalizations in Chrysanthemum
Students learn about word families by reading Kevin Henkes's book Chrysanthemum, identifying words with certain vowel pair endings, and reading words with similar endings.
Learning Centers: From Shared to Independent Practice
Seven blind mice—see how they spend each day of the week in this lesson that uses the book Seven Blind Mice to guide students through shared reading, writing, and listening activities.
Phonics Through Literature: Learning About the Letter M
Students learn about phonics by focusing on the letter m and participating in an integrated array of activities, including reading, writing, mathematics, music, art, and technology.
Whole-to-Parts Phonics Instruction: Teaching Letter-Sound Correspondences
Students will find that learning onset and rime is a handy skill when they read the Jack and Jill rhyme.
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.
Poetry Portfolios: Using Poetry to Teach Reading
Teach your students about sentence structure, rhyming words, sight words, vocabulary, and print concepts using a weekly poem.
Word Wizards: Students Making Words
The Word Wizard activities in this lesson transform phonics from drudgery into delight! Students manipulate letters to make different words.
A is for Apple: Building Letter-Recognition Fluency
Students apply and build their knowledge of letters and letter sounds as they play games and interact with letters online, creating their own ABC book as a final activity.
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.
Generating Rhymes: Developing Phonemic Awareness
Traditional chants and songs are adapted to help young students recognize and generate rhymes. The word and letter patterns involved in rhymes provide a stepping stone to reading skills.
Building Phonemic Awareness With Phoneme Isolation
Students improve phonemic awareness through games and chants that help them isolate beginning and ending sounds and connect them with their written symbols (graphemes).
Gingerbread Phonics
"Run, run, as fast as you can." Students use this refrain from The Gingerbread Man to learn letter-sound correspondence. Students use their new skills to write an online story.
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.