In this lesson, students will make text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections after reading In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson. After sharing and discussing connections, students choose and plan a project that makes a personal connection to the text.

Book Boosts—one-minute raves at the end of independent reading time—are easy ways to suggest new titles to students, and they act as a way for students to have something to think about as they read.

In this strategy guide, you will learn how to organize students and classroom topics to encourage a high degree of classroom participation and assist students in developing a conceptual understanding of a topic through the use of the Think-Pair-Share technique.

In this strategy, students read aloud to each other, pairing more fluent readers with less fluent readers. This strategy can also be used to pair older students with younger students to create "reading buddies."

Students will square up a conflict and learn how to effectively resolve any issues using a Solution Square.

Based on the Guided Comprehension Model developed by Maureen McLaughlin and Mary Beth Allen, this lesson introduces students to the strategy of evaluating, using the Meeting of the Minds technique.

"2-4-6-8, students will be spelling great" in this lesson that teaches the y rule for adding suffixes through cheering the spelling of words aloud, word sorts, and writing stories.

What does the world look like through a javelina's eyes? Students become javelinas in this lesson when they analyze a character and write from his or her perspective.

Did Paul Bunyan gouge out the Grand Canyon before or after he dug the Great Lakes? Students create a life-sized timeline showing the sequence of events in this tall tale.

What is it like to have a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day? Students find out in this lesson in which they "become" the characters in Judith Viorst's book.

Imagine if vocabulary could come alive with the click of a button! Students create video posters to demonstrate knowledge of new economics vocabulary.

Students demonstrate their knowledge of cause-and-effect relationships by creating original comic strips and sharing their completed work in an oral presentation format.

This lesson is a conversation-starter! In this lesson, students learn about striking up deep-thought conversations and staying on topic in the form of a book talk.

Conversation and cooperation bring out the best in students when they hold dialogues about their individual strengths, abilities, and talents.

Students won't miss a beat in this reading fluency lesson that combines music and poetry.

What's in a narrative? Students find out in this lesson in which they explore four narrative elements—setting, characters, problem/solution, and plot, through purpose-driven read-alouds and independent reading.

Journey around the world with students as they read a Japanese, African, or Welsh folk tale, create a visual depiction of the tale, research the tale's culture, and present findings.

Variable vowels are the focus of this lesson; students use nursery rhymes and ow to study how vowels can change their sounds according to different spelling patterns.

Students look to the past and use historical context to compare and contrast two characters from folktales.