Students increase their media literacy skills by critically examining and revising junk mail.

Turn summer reading lists from a teacher-centered requirement to a student-driven exploration by asking students to create brochures and flyers that suggest books to explore during the summer months.

Students identify genre characteristics for short stories and newspaper articles then practice both genres by turning a short story into a news article and an article into a short story.

Students use picture books as framing texts for research, freeing them from the language of encyclopedia sources and allowing them to focus their attention on the content of their papers.

Students create text sets on a high interest topic and use the texts to practice three strategies for reading for information.

Students compare e-mails to traditional letters, identifying style and intended audience for each. They then write both an e-mail and a letter about the same topic.

After reading Shakespeare's Hamlet, students identify, analyze, and explain how elements in Botticelli's painting Birth of Venus and examples from the play illustrate the philosophy of Renaissance Humanism.

Students write resumes for historical fiction characters. They first explore help wanted ads to see what employers want, and then draft resumes for the characters they've chosen.

Students develop a definition of multigenre texts by exploring multigenre picture books. They brainstorm what it takes to read these texts successfully and discuss strategies needed to comprehend the texts.

Students use graphic organizers to explore plot in circular stories while focusing on prediction and sequencing. After exploring the features of circular plot stories, students write their own stories.

In this minilesson, students explore the use of dialogue tags such as "he said" or "she answered" in picture books and novels, discussing their purpose, form, and style.

Students analyze dialogue tags used with male and female characters in a book they have read. They then evaluate the message the dialogue tags convey about gender roles.

Students listen to fiction and nonfiction read-alouds and explore selected Websites to identify factual information about animals. This lesson focuses on ants, but can be adapted to any animal.

Students analyze the elements of a novel in many different genres and then hyperlink these pieces together on student-constructed Websites.

This lesson plan invites students to consider characters from Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun. Students explore a selected character and write poems about objects associated with that character.

Students explore what Carol Jago calls the place "where life and art intersect" by reading Nikki Giovanni's poem, "Nikki-Rosa," and then writing about childhood memories of their own.

Students explore multiple genres through genre studies. They record evidence of genre characteristics on bookmarks as they read, and finish by giving a book review for their classmates.

In this author study, students listen to and discuss four books by Leo Lionni. They identify similarities and differences in the stories and then compare two stories of their choice.

This lesson provides the "action piece" for any study of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In this project, students participate in Dr. King's dream by doing 100 acts of kindness.