Students respond to a book they have read by thinking symbolically to create a business card for one of the characters.
Book Report Alternative: Character and Author Business Cards
Book Reviews, Annotation, and Web Technology
Students work in groups to create annotated book reviews with links to topics of interest related to their book.
Powerful Writing: Description in Creating Monster Trading Cards
Students create their own monster trading cards using "powerful," vivid language to describe their creatures.
Choose Your Own Adventure: A Hypertext Writing Experience
Students analyze "choose your own adventure" stories and brainstorm to develop setting, characters, and plots for their own adventures stories and related Websites.
Guess What's in the Bag: A Language-based Activity
Students play a guessing game to practice using descriptive language.
A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words: From Image to Detailed Narrative
The old cliche, "A picture is worth a thousand words" is put to the test when students write their own narrative interpretations of events shown in an image.
Writing a Flashback and Flash-Forward Story Using Movies and Texts as Models
Using the film The Sandlot, students are introduced to the literary devices of flashbacks and flash-forwards. They then write their own stories using those devices.
Writing Reports in Kindergarten? Yes!
This lesson encourages young students to see themselves as writers with a message to convey. Three types of reports are provided to show what kindergartners and emergent writers can do.
Daily Book Boosts
Book Boostsone-minute raves at the end of independent reading timeare easy ways to suggest new titles to students, and they act as a way for students to have something to think about as they read.
Story Character Homepage
Students analyze personal homepages, as well as a character in a book they have read, and then create a homepage for the character.
Get the Reel Scoop: Comparing Books to Movies
Students compare a book to its film adaptation, and then perform readers theater of a scene from the book that they feel was not well represented in the movie version.
Draw a Story: Stepping from Pictures to Writing
Students draw a series of pictures that tell a story, including character action, problem and solution. They ‘read' their story to others, transcribe it into writing, and create an accordion book.
Expository Escapade—Detective's Handbook
Students create a Detective's Handbook based on a detective mystery they have read. The handbooks include expository and descriptive writing, as well as a letter.
Playing with Prepositions through Poetry
Students play with and explore prepositions during a whole group reading of Ruth Heller's Behind the Mask, and then by composing and publishing prepositional poems based on the book's style.
From Stop Signs to the Golden Arches: Environmental Print
Students bring the print-rich environment of the community into the classroom through the use of environmental print, enabling emergent readers to delight in the realization that they are indeed readers.
Introducing Each Other: Interviews, Memoirs, Photos, and Internet Research
Students use their communication and writing skills as they interview a partner, write an article about them, and create a multimodal presentation to introduce their partner to the class.
Quantitative Civic Reasoning: A Guide for Centering Civic Innovation in Math and English Language Arts Classrooms
This guide explores quantitative civic reasoning in English and math classrooms.
Rosa Parks was born on this day in 1913.
Rosa Parks was committed to the struggle for social justice and human rights until her death, inspiring millions of people around the world. Today, we celebrate her!
2025 NCTE Annual Convention
Each November thousands of literacy educators from across the country make the journey to a Convention that inspires their practice and rejuvenates their profession.
Literary Graffiti
Literary Graffiti, a high school version of the Doodle Splash student interactive, also aims to teach students to visualize what they are reading to help them develop as readers.