Students learn components of think-alouds and type-of-text interactions through teacher modeling. In the process, students develop the ability to use think-alouds to aid in reading comprehension tasks.
Building Reading Comprehension Through Think-Alouds
Grades
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Using a Predictable Text to Teach High-Frequency Words
K - 2
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
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.
Grades
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Fighting Injustice by Studying Lessons of the Past
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Unit
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.
Grades
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Building Phonemic Awareness With Phoneme Isolation
K - 2
Lesson Plan
| Recurring Lesson
Students improve phonemic awareness through games and chants that help them isolate beginning and ending sounds and connect them with their written symbols (graphemes).
Grades
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Gingerbread Phonics
K - 2
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
"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.
Grades
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Using THIEVES to Preview Nonfiction Texts
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
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.
Grades
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Scaffolding Comprehension Strategies Using Graphic Organizers
3 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Students learn collaborative strategic reading (CSR). During and after reading, students apply four reading strategiespreview, click and clunk, get the gist, and wrap-upand use graphic organizers for scaffolding.
Grades
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Exploring World Cultures Through Folk Tales
3 - 5
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
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.
Grades
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The Two Voices of the ow Spelling Pattern
3 - 5
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
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.
Grades
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In the Poet's Shoes: Performing Poetry and Building Meaning
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Unit
Students take poetic license when they interpret William Carlos William's poem "The Red Wheelbarrow" to help create a poem of their own.
Grades
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Getting to Know You: Developing Short Biographies to Build Community
3 - 5
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
How well do your students know their peers? Students transform into investigative reporters as they interview a classmate, compile the biographical data into graphic form, and introduce the student to the class.
Grades
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Once They're Hooked, Reel Them In: Writing Good Endings
3 - 5
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
It's important to "hook" readers at a story's beginning, but it's equally important to keep them interested. In this lesson, students learn to write effective conclusions to their own stories.
Grades
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Digital Reflections: Expressing Understanding of Content Through Photography
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Unit
Striking images can leave lasting impressions on viewers. In this lesson, students make textselfworld connections to a nature- or science-related topic as they collaboratively design a multimedia presentation.
Grades
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Music and Me: Visual Representations of Lyrics to Popular Music
9 - 12
Lesson Plan
| Unit
Students will whistle while they work on this lesson, creating a photomontage movie of their interpretation of a favorite song's lyrics that will end everyone's day on a high note.
Grades
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Great American Inventors: Using Nonfiction to Learn About Technology Inventions
3 - 5
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Who are the people behind the world's greatest inventions? Students read biographies of a terrific trio of American inventors and create presentations that highlight how their inventions from the past impacted the future.
Grades
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Bingo! Using Environmental Print to Practice Reading
K - 2
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
The game Bingo is transformed in this lesson in which students use symbols and images to make connections to environmental print through the use of personalized Bingo cards.
Grades
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Play Ball! Encouraging Critical Thinking Through Baseball Questions
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Cooperation and critical thinking are the name of the game as students use baseball facts they find online to create trivia questions for a class Jeopardy game.
Grades
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Storytelling in the Social Studies Classroom
3 - 5
Lesson Plan
| Unit
People make the past come alive as students research and then share stories about famous Americans who promoted democratic ideals.
Grades
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A Race With Grace: Sports Poetry in Motion
3 - 5
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
In this lesson, athletics, aesthetics, and poetics intersect in new ways as developing literacy learners experiment together with the forms of language.
Grades
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Choosing the Right Book: Strategies for Beginning Readers
K - 2
Lesson Plan
| Recurring Lesson
Students make purposeful choices for their reading materials, thinking about their reasons for reading a book and using strategies to match books to their abilities.