Students identify the characteristics of mystery writing, outline a mystery story using a graphic organizer, write and revise their own mystery story, edit each other's work, and share their mysteries.
What's in a Mystery? Exploring and Identifying Mystery Elements
Alliteration All Around
Students learn about alliteration, and then practice using alliteration in acrostic poems, tongue twisters, alphabet books, and number books.
Learning About Word Families with Click, Clack, Moo
Using text from Doreen Cronin's Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type as shared readings, first-grade students learn word families and how to decode new words in a word family.
All About Alliteration: Responding to Literature Through a Poetry Link
Studied students stupefy! Students learn about alliteration by listening to an alliterative read-aloud and apply the knowledge they gain to the creation of their own poem and illustration.
Seeing Integration From Different Viewpoints
What does the world look like through someone else's eyes? Guide students in using colorful paper glasses to examine a story of school desegregation from multiple perspectives.
Building Classroom Community Through the Exploration of Acrostic Poetry
What do your students think about each other? Find out as you teach them the concepts of acrostic poems and challenge them to write an uplifting acrostic about a classmate.
Word Study with Henry and Mudge
Henry and Mudge is used in this lesson to build students' word recognition through rereading, high-frequency word banks, word studies, and writing.
Review Redux: Introducing Literary Criticism Through Reception Moments
Literature takes on a life of its own as students take a hands-on approach to exploring A Raisin in the Sun for cultural and historical context.
Theme Poems: Writing Extraordinary Poems About Ordinary Objects
Students select a familiar object online, build a bank of words related to the object, and write theme poems that are printed and displayed in class.
Solving Word Meanings: Engaging Strategies for Vocabulary Development
Vocabulary gumshoes use context clues and semantics to determine the meaning of unfamiliar words.
Viewing Vocabulary: Building Word Knowledge Through Informational Websites
Students read a text to identify important words, discuss them with peers, summarize the text, and read related texts to identify how those words are used in other contexts.
Combining Read-Alouds With Economics in the Primary Grades
Students learn that what you read in books can really add up when they analyze literary texts for economic concepts.
Using Greeting Cards to Motivate Students and Enhance Literacy Skills
Imagination and illustration are the key in this lesson in which students read and create their own greeting cards.
The Magnetism of Language: Parts of Speech, Poetry, and Word Play
What wonderful ways words work! The parts of speech are the highlight of this lesson in which students identify parts of speech in a nonsensical poem and then create their own wild and wacky rhymes.
A World of Readers: Libraries Around the World
Bookworms will enjoy the bytes they find in this lesson as they research and share information about online library services in places around the world.
Spelling Patterns "Go Fish" Card Game
Students use sets of words that share a spelling pattern to create a card game like "Go Fish" and then play the game in groups, helping them improve their spelling.
Let's Read It Again: Comprehension Strategies for English-Language Learners
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.
Improve Comprehension: A Word Game Using Root Words and Affixes
Students study common root words and affixes, improve their comprehension and spelling, and make a card game in which they form words with a prefix, root word, and suffix.
Read a Song: Using Song Lyrics for Reading and Writing
This lesson will be music to the students' ears when they hear that they get to read song lyrics and compose original lyrics for a familiar song.
Whose Shoes? Using Artifacts to Teach Reading and Rhyming Patterns
If the shoe fits… Actually, any shoe will fit this lesson, and the Artifact Analysis Questions provided will help students see it in a whole new way. Several rhyming texts take the shoe theme a step further, and introduce activities to increase students' awareness of rhyming words.