Groups of students read and discuss American folklore stories, each group reading a different story. Using a jigsaw strategy, the groups compare character traits and main plot points of the stories. A diverse selection of American folk tales is used for this lesson, which is adaptable to any text set.

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.

This lesson provides a wealth of ideas for using notes in the classroom to promote authentic writing among children.

This lesson encourages students to use rhyming words to write rebus poetry modeled on rebus books, which substitute pictures for the words that young students cannot yet identify or decode.

After reading the book ¡Si, Se Puede!/Yes, We Can!: Janitor Strike in L.A., students learn about labor unions, strikes, and organizing for change. Students interview staff members in their school to learn about their daily work life, and write persuasive advocacy letters.

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.

In this lesson, students work with proverbs from home and from around the world, exploring how these maxims are tied to a culture's values and everyday experience.

This lesson engages children in using writing to their families as a persuasive tool to get what they want and need.

This lesson encourages children to explore authentic reasons for writing by writing messages to their family in a family message journal.

Students take a walk on the wild side when they research an animal and create a scavenger hunt activity for their classmates.

Start the presses! Catchy titles, eye-popping graphics, and attractive fonts are all on students' agendas in this lesson as they create magazine covers to summarize a topic.

Students have the right to have fun in this lesson in which they create a PowerPoint presentation about civil rights and the Supreme Court.

Past meets present in this lesson in which students practice verb tense when they write personal short stories that they then publish in a flip book.

Students learn that what you read in books can really add up when they analyze literary texts for economic concepts.

Help Spanish-speaking English-language learners unlock the mysteries of their new language by using a bilingual book to recognize unfamiliar words and construct meaning from the text.

Make connections across genres and across cultures to engage students in the study of literary voice and themes. Comprehension skills and vocabulary also come into play, especially for English language learners, as students read a novel and related poems, then write and perform original poems related to the novel.