Students participate in a scavenger hunt for shapes; reading, writing, and discussion of shapes encourage literacy and math skills.
Going on a Shape Hunt: Integrating Math and Literacy
Telling a Story About Me: Young Children Write Autobiographies
Students tell their life stories in this lesson about autobiographies based on family photographs.
Readers Theatre With Jan Brett
Students in grades 1-2 use Jan Brett's Hedgie's Surprise for a Readers Theatre experience.
Astronomy Poetry: Combining Poetry With the Content Areas
Students' responses to this lesson will be out of this world after they've researched astronomy to write poetry and compile a poetry book.
You Can't Spell the Word Prefix Without a Prefix
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.
A Biography Study: Using Role-Play to Explore Authors' Lives
Students read biographies and explore websites of selected American authors and then role-play as the authors.
Thundering Tall Tales: Using Read-Aloud as a Springboard to Writing
Imagination and application are key to this tall tale lesson in which students take what they know about tall tales to spin a yarn of their own.
Predicting and Gathering Information With Nonfiction Texts
Students take a walk on the wild side when they develop an understanding of nonfiction texts with hands-on experiences and intense analysis.
Name Talk: Exploring Letter-Sound Knowledge in the Primary Classroom
Students demonstrate their letter/sound knowledge by working with name cards and sharing observations about their classmates' names, giving teachers an opportunity to assess knowledge in a meaningful context.
Developing a Living Definition of Reading in the Elementary Classroom
Using the guiding question, "What is reading?" students interact with a variety of texts as they uncover the skills necessary to interact with texts and develop a definition of reading.
Beyond History Books: Researching With Twin Texts and Technology
Students in grades 4–8 activate prior knowledge and research information about a historic event through fiction and nonfiction literature and exploration of relevant websites.
Seeking Social Justice Through Satire: Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal"
This lesson assists advanced students in grades 10–12 in comprehending Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" and developing a presentation to satirize a contemporary social issue.
What is Poetry? Contrasting Poetry and Prose
Students often find poetry frustrating and meaningless. By helping students think critically about the differences between poetry and prose, this introduction sets the stage for different strategies for comprehending poetic texts.
Engaging With Cause-and-Effect Relationships Through Creating Comic Strips
Students demonstrate their knowledge of cause-and-effect relationships by creating original comic strips and sharing their completed work in an oral presentation format.
When I Was Young In...A Literature to Language Experience
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.
Lonely as a Cloud: Using Poetry to Understand Similes
Students identify similes in poetry and gain experience in using similes as a poetic device in their own work.
Shared Poetry Reading: Teaching Print Concepts, Rhyme, and Vocabulary
The rhyme and reason behind this lesson is that students will need to develop important reading skills to increase their reading fluency.
Rooting Out Meaning: Morpheme Match-Ups in the Primary Grades
In this lesson, students use morphemesEnglish words that have been formed by combining common word partsto explore word meanings.
Teaching About Story Structure Using Fairy Tales
From "once upon a time" to "happily ever after," students learn to recognize story structure in fairy tales and create a logical sequence of events when writing original stories.
Buzz! Whiz! Bang! Using Comic Books to Teach Onomatopoeia
This lesson is sure to sizzle, not fizzle, as students use comic strips to find onomatopoetic words, develop a vocabulary list from the words, and discuss why writers use onomatopoeia.