Students read biographies and explore websites of selected American authors and then role-play as the authors.

Students read a work of realistic fiction about bullying and gain understanding through writing, Readers Theatre, and discussion.

Students learn how to effectively deal with bullying by participating in literature response groups and writing about when they experienced a similar situation or emotion as a fictional character.

A picture is worth a thousand words as students are guided in viewing wordless picture books and responding to four different types of questions about the images they see.

What makes you happy? What makes you sad? Connecting words to feelings enriches vocabulary and helps with concept development.

"That's my position and I'm sticking to it!" After reading about the Korean War, students will take a position in response to an open-ended question, support their position, and evaluate that support.

Where did the stars come from? What makes lightning and thunder? Pourquoi tales are narratives developed by various cultures around the world to explain natural phenomena. Students study three tales and learn about their cultures of origin, then work cooperatively to write and present an original pourquoi tale.

In an effort to help motivate students to read nonfiction, students are challenged to use a timeline to help them name the year when certain products were invented.

Did Paul Bunyan gouge out the Grand Canyon before or after he dug the Great Lakes? Students create a life-sized timeline showing the sequence of events in this tall tale.

What is it like to have a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day? Students find out in this lesson in which they "become" the characters in Judith Viorst's book.

Students practice with words and develop both definitional and contextual knowledge through two agents—purposeful sequencing of steps and collaboration with peers.

Students identify interesting words from Shakespeare's plays and add them to a classroom vocabulary collection.

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.

This lesson encourages students to immerse themselves in poetry as they share their original poems orally and digitally with published poets and peers nationwide.

Imagine if vocabulary could come alive with the click of a button! Students create video posters to demonstrate knowledge of new economics vocabulary.

This minilesson encourages children to seek out and appropriately react to nutrition labels and to make healthy food choices, integrating science, math, health, and literacy.

This lesson teaches intermediate students to "use the experts" to learn how to revise to create sharp, sensory-rich experiences for their readers.

Students reflect on their school year, creating a digital scrapbook consisting of images and text to present to their school community.

Students demonstrate their knowledge of cause-and-effect relationships by creating original comic strips and sharing their completed work in an oral presentation format.