Students learn about the life and music of John Lennon, write a short story from their lives integrating lyrics from some of their favorite songs, and create a class book of stories.
Songs of Our Lives: Using Lyrics to Write Stories
The Mysteries of Harris Burdick: Using Illustrations to Guide Writing
Students use illustrations from The Mysteries of Harris Burdick as a guide to write mysteries
and then present their stories to the class for students to discuss to which illustration each
story corresponds.
Designing Elements of Story in Little Blue and Little Yellow
In this series of four lessons, students will explore key elements of design in Little Blue and
Little Yellow to learn about setting, character relationships, and plot.
Audience & Purpose: Evaluating Disney's Changes to the Hercules Myth
What drives changes to classic myths and fables? In this lesson students evaluate the changes Disney made to the myth of "Hercules" in order to achieve their audience and purpose.
Boars and Baseball: Making Connections
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.
Writing Acrostic Poems with Thematically Related Texts in the Content Areas
Students read thematically related texts, scaffolded from simple to complex, to help them gather necessary concept vocabulary and background knowledge in a content area. They then write acrostic poems to organize and present their learning in a creative way.
Read Across America Day: Celebrate a Nation of Diverse Readers
Bring the celebration of reading and literacy into your classroom, library, school, and home all year long.
Connection Web
Students use this printout to expand on connections they have made to a text and use those details to write essays or create projects about the text.
Using the RAFT Writing Strategy
This strategy guide introduces the RAFT technique and offers practical ideas for using this technique to teach students to experiment with various perspectives in their writing.
Using Word Walls to Develop and Maintain Academic Vocabulary
In this guide, you will learn how to use Word Walls to support vocabulary development and retention.
Earth Verse: Using Science in Poetry
Students shape up their reading, writing, and listening skills in this lesson by creating original diamante, acrostic, and shape poems about science.
Promoting Cultural Values Through Alphabet Books
C is for Culture in this lesson in which students research a culture different from their own and compile an alphabet book that showcases cultural symbols for each letter of the alphabet.
Thoughtshots Can Bring Your Characters to Life!
Students will walk a mile in the shoes of Solomon Singer as they learn how to use flashbacks, flash-aheads, and internal dialogue to develop realistic characters.
Descriptive Video: Using Media Technology to Enhance Writing
Students will have a roaring good time when they watch a scene from The Lion King as a way to compare standard and described programming media.
Developing Inferential Comprehension Through DL-TA and Discussion Webs
Students will love unwrapping this lesson about before, during, and after reading activities based on Margaree King Mitchell's book, Grandaddy's Gift.
Guided Comprehension: Evaluating Using the Meeting of the Minds Technique
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.
Guided Comprehension: Knowing How Words Work Using Semantic Feature Analysis
Based on the Guided Comprehension Model developed by Maureen McLaughlin and Mary Beth Allen, this lesson introduces students to the comprehension strategy of knowing how words work.
Reading, Writing, Haiku Hiking! A Class Book of Picturesque Poems
Students learn haiku
write descriptive poems
and share with the class.
Readers Theatre
Students develop scripts, perform, and use their voices to depict characters from texts, giving them the opportunity to develop fluency and further enhance comprehension of what they are reading.
Multimedia Responses to Content Area Topics Using Fact-"Faction"-Fiction
Students climb into the mind of a spider in this lesson that asks them to compose a spider diary using spider facts, fiction, and "faction"fiction that sounds like fact.