Students analyze characterization by creating their own superheroes or super-villains,
complete with related gadgets and settings.
Fantastic Characters: Analyzing and Creating Superheroes and Villains
Cut up, Cover up, and Come Away with Ideas for Writing!
Students rework their forgotten/abandoned drafts by cutting and covering up selected words. By creatively manipulating text, they explore portal writing, a strategy for envisioning a new story or story direction.
Building Vocabulary: Making Multigenre Glossaries Based on Student Inquiry
Students choose unfamiliar words from their reading and create a multigenre, multimodal glossary of terms.
Supporting Vocabulary Development with EASE
This lesson allows teachers to enrich students' oral and written vocabulary using the EASE sequence of instruction: Enunciate, Associate, Synthesize, and Emphasize the words you want students to use.
Entering History: Nikki Giovanni and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Nikki Giovanni's poem "The Funeral of Martin Luther King, Jr." is paired with Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech, taking students on a quest through time to the Civil Rights movement.
Finding the Science Behind Science Fiction through Paired Readings
Students read science fiction texts and then use nonfiction texts to extrapolate the scientific principles presented as they discuss the "what ifs" within the context of scientific principles.
Focusing Reader Response Through Vocabulary Analysis
Students suggest and categorize words that they associate with a novel they have recently read, ranging from details about the plot to feelings about a character.
Highlighting Out-of-School Language Expertise with Pop Culture Dictionaries
Students compose dictionary entries for words and phrases from pop culture texts (e.g., television shows, movies, lyrics, YouTube videos), connecting their definitions to their personal use of the terms.
A-B-C: It's Easy as 1-2-3 to Make Math Alphabet Books
Using the Alphabet Organizer app, students create alphabet books to review math terms.
Action Is Character: Exploring Character Traits with Adjectives
Students must "become" a character in a novel in order to describe themselves and other characters using powerful adjectives.
She Did What? Revising for Connotation
Did she walk, skip, amble, dance? In this minilesson, students explore connotation by acting out and revising the simple sentence "She walked into the room."
Avalanche, Aztek, or Bravada? A Connotation Minilesson
Students examine familiar car names for underlying connotations then proceed through a series of steps, increasing their control over language, until they select words with powerful connotations in their own writing.
Expository Escapade—Detective's Handbook
Students create a Detective's Handbook based on a detective mystery they have read. The handbooks include expository and descriptive writing, as well as a letter.
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.
Stapleless Book
The Stapleless Book can be used for taking notes while reading, making picture books, collecting facts, or creating vocabulary booklets . . . the possibilities are endless!
Crossword Puzzles
This tool allows students to complete crossword puzzles on a variety of grade-appropriate topics, and also create and print their own crossword puzzles.
Mystery Cube
The Mystery Cube helps students identify and summarize story elements in this popular genre. It can be used as a postreading or prewriting activity.
Diamante Poems
This online tool enables students to learn about and write diamante poems.
Alphabet Organizer
Students use this online tool to create an alphabet chart or pages for an alphabet book.
Flip-a-Chip
The Flip-a-Chip activity provides hands-on practice with affixes and roots, and also promotes comprehension through structural analysis and vocabulary in context.