Cinderella without castles, coaches, or ball gowns? Students use versions of Cinderella to explore how the setting of a storytime, place, and cultureaffects the characters and plot.
Behind the Scenes With Cinderella
Exploring Disability Using Multimedia and the B-D-A Reading Strategy
History takes on new dimensions in this interactive multimedia lesson that emphasizes the B-D-A approach to research as students investigate the experiences of people with disabilities since the early 1800s.
Discovering a Passion for Poetry With Langston Hughes
Through a study of Langston Hughes' poetry, students connect his writing to his place in history.
The Big Green Monster Teaches Phonics in Reading and Writing
A big green monster helps students build their reading fluency and word recognition skills through choral reading, literacy center activities, and writing stories.
Creating a Classroom Newspaper
Students write authentic newspaper stories, including learning about various aspects of newspapers, such as writing an article, online articles, newspaper reading habits, and layout and design techniques.
Wartime Poetry: Working With Similes
Students analyze a photograph, brainstorm words to describe the characters' senses and feelings, work in pairs to describe a character's experience, and create a poem using their ideas and similes.
Biography Project: Research and Class Presentation
Classroom biography study offers high-interest reading with a purpose, as students begin with inquiry and research, summarize and organize their information, and prepare oral presentations to share with the class.
Let's Build a Snowman
In this lesson, students use both fiction and nonfiction texts, the Internet, and a K-W-L chart to learn about how animals survive the winter.
Spelling Cheerleading: Integrating Movement and Spelling Generalizations
"2-4-6-8, students will be spelling great" in this lesson that teaches the y rule for adding suffixes through cheering the spelling of words aloud, word sorts, and writing stories.
Guided Comprehension: Monitoring Using the INSERT Technique
Based on the Guided Comprehension Model developed by Maureen McLaughlin and Mary Beth Allen, this lesson introduces students to the comprehension strategy of monitoring.
Using Writing and Role-Play to Engage the Reluctant Writer
What does the world look like through a javelina's eyes? Students become javelinas in this lesson when they analyze a character and write from his or her perspective.
Magazine Redux: An Exercise in Critical Literacy
Paper and pixels get compared in this lesson in which students compare both printed and online versions of a magazine.
Teaching Point of View With Two Bad Ants
Students will be crawling all over this assignment when they use illustrations and text to learn about life from a bug's point of view.
Peer Edit With Perfection: Effective Strategies
Students take a fresh look at the revision process and help one another polish their written work through a peer-editing strategy that is simple, systematic, and constructive.
Diagram It! Identifying, Comparing, and Writing About Nonfiction Texts
Students compare the traits fact and fiction by using a Venn diagram to compare fiction and nonfiction books about Native Americans.
Telling a Story About Me: Young Children Write Autobiographies
Students tell their life stories in this lesson about autobiographies based on family photographs.
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.
Q is for Duck: Using Alphabet Books With Struggling Writers
A is for zoo? Q is for duck? The alphabet as students know it is transformed when students create a class book that contains clever associations for each letter of the alphabet.
Thrills! Chills! Using Scary Stories to Motivate Students to Read
Students examine story elements through teacher read-alouds and independent reading and then use reader-response journals and graphic organizers to prepare for the creation of their own scary stories.
Reciprocal Revision: Making Peer Feedback Meaningful
Interpreting art is a subjective process. In this lesson, students write written responses analyzing a work of art and use feedback from their peers to revise or confirm their initial responses.