How do you spell polysyllabic? While this word may be a bit too advanced for students, they will definitely be spelling polysyllabic words using a strategy called Spelling in Parts.

Students will think this lesson should make the headlines when they finish researching Ernie Pyle's work in preparation for writing their own news articles.

Students get the big picture of the Middle East when they read and analyze Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel Persepolis.

Students won't miss a beat in this musical lesson that combines listening with personal response on a postcard.

The classroom becomes a stage in this interactive lesson in which students sing, act, and design comic strips to learn the meanings and spellings of common homophones.

"Bessie bird lives in a barn" in this lesson in which students create alliterative animal songs to help them learn letter names and consonant sounds and build phonemic awareness.

A big green monster helps students build their reading fluency and word recognition skills through choral reading, literacy center activities, and writing stories.

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.

Through interactive writing, students work together and then independently to create invitation letters for a group of their peers and their families.

"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.

Based on the Guided Comprehension Model developed by Maureen McLaughlin and Mary Beth Allen, this lesson introduces students to the comprehension strategy of previewing.

Students practice matching rhyming words, apply phonological awareness to analogy-based phonics, and use the interactive Construct-a-Word to create rhyming words by adding a beginning consonant to a word ending.

Paper and pixels get compared in this lesson in which students compare both printed and online versions of a magazine.

Students often believe that fiction writers make everything up, seldom realizing how research worms its way into entertaining writing. In this lesson, students read Diary of a Worm to find out how fact merges with fiction.

Students participate in a scavenger hunt for shapes; reading, writing, and discussion of shapes encourage literacy and math skills.

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.

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.

Use an engaging, authentic text to build students' knowledge of phonic elements and give them a taste of Japanese culture.

Students demonstrate their letter/sound knowledge by working with name cards and sharing observations about their classmates' names, giving teachers an opportunity to assess knowledge in a meaningful context.