It is important for students to know how to evaluate messages conveyed by the news media. Exploration of the artistic techniques used in political cartoons leads to critical questioning.

Students create mental images while reading using a three-pronged approach: developing schemata and visual awareness; Watch-Read-Watch-Read (W-R-W-R), using video clips; and a strategy similar to the think-aloud approach.

Y'all set down a spell and learn ‘bout dialects!" In other words, your students will use The Color Purple to explore dialect and how it reveals information about the characters.

Students examine the fallacies that surround them every day, deconstruct fallacious images and messages in advertisements, and demonstrate their understanding of the fallacies through multimedia presentations.

Poetry and politics combine in this lesson where students write a free verse poem in the voice of Cesar Chavez.

Students read "After Twenty Years" by O. Henry, use a word map to identify characters' qualities or traits, discuss the characters' feelings and actions, and reflect upon these in journals.

Students' responses to this lesson will be out of this world after they've researched astronomy to write poetry and compile a poetry book.

Students examine story elements through teacher read-alouds and independent reading and then use reader-response journals and graphic organizers to prepare for the creation of their own scary stories.

Interpreting art is a subjective process. In this lesson, students write written responses analyzing a work of art and use feedback from their peers to revise or confirm their initial responses.

Students explore the role of prefixes, as well as their origins and meanings, and examine how the understanding of prefixes can improve comprehension, decoding, and spelling.

Students read biographies and explore websites of selected American authors and then role-play as the authors.

Students research mask-making from various cultures, highlight the masks' connections to cultural practices, compose poetry to reveal their understanding, analyze their own culture, and create personal masks and poetry.

Students read a work of realistic fiction about bullying and gain understanding through writing, Readers Theatre, and discussion.

In an effort to help motivate students to read nonfiction, students are challenged to use a timeline to help them name the year when certain products were invented.

Students practice with words and develop both definitional and contextual knowledge through two agents—purposeful sequencing of steps and collaboration with peers.

Students read Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis, demonstrate comprehension of the story by involving themselves in discussions, and analyze the characters in preparation for a class "press conference."

Students identify interesting words from Shakespeare's plays and add them to a classroom vocabulary collection.

Graphic organizers assist the development of comparative vocabulary and generate discussions of analogy and metaphor in art as students go on a real or virtual tour of an art gallery.

Students read and analyze fairy tales from several cultures, identifying common elements. Choosing common situations, students write original fairy tales, using picture books as models and a peer review process.

Introduce students to the idea that movies and TV have their own language and grammar, which gives them special ways of telling their stories.