Students learn about and apply the prediction strategy while reading a trade book. They use response journals to record questions and responses based on prereading predictions.
Using Prediction as a Prereading Strategy
Cowboys and Castles: Interacting With Fractured Texas Tales
What do cowboy hats have to do with fairy tales? Two traditional fairy tales and their Texas-based counterparts set the stage for five different ways to respond to text.
Poetry Portfolios: Using Poetry to Teach Reading
Teach your students about sentence structure, rhyming words, sight words, vocabulary, and print concepts using a weekly poem.
QARs + Tables = Successful Comprehension of Math Word Problems
Using census data for an example, students use the question-answer relationship (QAR) strategy to understand and solve word problems that refer to tables and other graphics.
Word Wizards: Students Making Words
The Word Wizard activities in this lesson transform phonics from drudgery into delight! Students manipulate letters to make different words.
Lights, Camera, Action: Interviewing a Book Character
Students get the inside scoop on a story when they create interview questions and answers for characters in the books they read.
Using a Predictable Text to Teach High-Frequency Words
After reading an engaging yet predictable text about a child looking for his cat, students use a similar format and high-frequency words to craft tales about their own lost pets.
Fighting Injustice by Studying Lessons of the Past
Social injustice occurs every day all over the world. In this lesson, students research a few historical examples of social injustice, including the Holocaust, the Trail of Tears, and Japanese internment.
Multimedia Responses to Content Area Topics Using Fact-"Faction"-Fiction
Students climb into the mind of a spider in this lesson that asks them to compose a spider diary using spider facts, fiction, and "faction"fiction that sounds like fact.
Gingerbread Phonics
"Run, run, as fast as you can." Students use this refrain from The Gingerbread Man to learn letter-sound correspondence. Students use their new skills to write an online story.
Using THIEVES to Preview Nonfiction Texts
Students become "thieves" in this lesson as they use a previewing strategy to "steal" information from textbooks and other nonfiction texts before actually reading them.
The Big, Bad Wolf...Is This a Fact?
Reading is revamped in this lesson in which students use a multimedia approach to study the books by Seymour Simon.
Critical Media Literacy: Commercial Advertising
By looking at advertising and mass media critically, students begin to understand how the media oppresses certain groups, convinces people to purchase certain products, and influences culture.
Critical Media Literacy: TV Programs
By critically analyzing popular television programs, students develop an awareness of the messages that are portrayed through the media.
Exploring World Cultures Through Folk Tales
Journey around the world with students as they read a Japanese, African, or Welsh folk tale, create a visual depiction of the tale, research the tale's culture, and present findings.
The Two Voices of the ow Spelling Pattern
Variable vowels are the focus of this lesson; students use nursery rhymes and ow to study how vowels can change their sounds according to different spelling patterns.
Analyzing Character Development in Three Short Stories About Women
Students read three short stories about women; discuss the development of female characters, gender differences, and society's expectations; and write scripts in which the characters discuss their similarities and differences.
Protecting Our Precious Planet: Sharing the Message of Earth Day
Students discover that they can make a world of difference when they participate in the online Earth Day bag program.
Pairing Fiction With Poetry and Performance
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.
A Schema-Building Study With Patricia Polacco
Students use the Semantic Impressions and Possible Sentences strategies to write about Patricia Polacco's books Chicken Sunday and Rechenka's Egg, complete a character study, and write using a WebQuest.