Students analyze characterization by creating their own superheroes or super-villains, complete with related gadgets and settings.

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.

Students practice writing detailed, sensory-rich descriptions by framing a small piece of nature and freewriting about it. From this minilesson, students can develop a variety of types of 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.

Using different writing/drawing materials (e.g., markers, color pencils, pastels, etc.), students learn how to communicate different moods and/or feelings to support their written ideas and how authors do the same through their work.

In this lesson, students analyze similarities and differences among depictions of slavery in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Frederick Douglass' Narrative, and nineteenth century photographs of slaves. Students formulate their analysis of the role of art and fiction, as they attempt to reliably reflect social ills, in a final essay.

This lesson supports third-through-sixth grade students as they communicate story setting to their readers through the use of visual image prompts. Activities include individual and cooperative learning group work, as well as whole class discussion.

After reading several examples of how a published author incorporates facts in fiction writing, students research a topic of their choice and write fictional diary entries that incorporate factual information.

Students select a book to read based only on its cover art. After reading the book, they use an interactive tool to create a new cover for it.

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.

Students explore a range of resources on fair use and copyright then design their own audio public service announcements (PSAs), to be broadcast over the school's public address system.

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.

In this lesson, students read a literary text with the eye of a director, selecting scenes from the text and putting a cinematic spin on them.

In this lesson, students build classroom community by exploring environmental print and a teacher-created display that focuses on a favorite book. They then create and share their own presentations.

Students research the items listed in the song "We Didn't Start the Fire" by Billy Joel, noting their historical relevance, and then document their findings using an online chart.

Students explore a variety of resources as they learn about the Holocaust. Working collaboratively, they investigate the materials, prepare oral responses, and produce a topic-based newspaper to complete their research.

Students identify genre characteristics for short stories and newspaper articles then practice both genres by turning a short story into a news article and an article into a short story.

Students create text sets on a high interest topic and use the texts to practice three strategies for reading for information.

Students are challenged to find citations that support details about the characters, plot, or themes from a text.