Students analyze the lyrics to Cole Porter's "You're the Top!" and then update them to include current "tops" in pop culture.

In this follow-up to writing collaborative catalog poems, students write individual catalog poems about what really matters in their lives, based on Carver's poem "The Car."

Using the structure of a list poem, students combine creative expression with poetic techniques and language exploration in order to write group poems about what really matters in their lives.

Students select what they believe to be the most important word in a text that they have read and justify their choice using examples from the text.

Students discuss and compare differing versions of "Little Red Riding Hood" and other tales about wolves in cumulative read-aloud sessions and text set explorations.

In small groups, students closely examine one sentence from the Gettysburg Address and create a multigenre project communicating what they have discovered about the meaning and significance of the text.

By exploring myths and truths surrounding Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, students think critically about commonly believed stories regarding this famous speech from the Civil War era.

Working in small groups, students read and discuss Elie Wiesel's memoir Night and then take turns assuming the "teacher" role, as the class works with four different comprehension strategies.

Capture students' enthusiasm for film and transfer it to reading and literature by substituting film production roles for the traditional literature circle roles.

Writing a review of an author's work challenges students to develop their critical thinking skills. It provides an opportunity for students to speak their minds—and to enjoy being heard.

Students write persuasive letters to their librarian requesting that specific texts be added to the school library. As they work, students plan their arguments and outline their reasons and examples.

Students interview family members, and then create graphic family timelines based on important and memorable family events.

In this graphical mapping project, students assign a value to the events, characters, and themes in a novel and think about how the elements of the story are all interconnected.

The list of ten things about Opal's absent mother that her father shares in Because of Winn-Dixie serves as inspiration for students to create their own lists describing literary characters.

Students create a soundtrack for a novel that they have read, as they engage in such traditional reading strategies as predicting, visualizing, and questioning.

Explore the modern significance of an older text, such as Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, by asking students to create their own modern interpretation of specific events from the drama.

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.

Students read and analyze fairy tales, identifying their common elements. They then write their own "fractured" fairy tales by changing one of the literary elements found in the original.

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.