Students will be the definition of vocabulary experts as they use the skills they learn in this lesson to track, define, and ultimately master unfamiliar words.
Using a Word Journal to Create a Personal Dictionary
The Frog Beyond the Fairy Tale Character: Searching Informational Texts
Frogs often appear as the main character in fiction stories, but what do students really know about frogs? Students find out in this lesson in which they research real-life frogs.
Story Map
The Story Map interactive is designed to assist students in prewriting and postreading activities by focusing on the key elements of character, setting, conflict, and resolution.
Hero's Journey
Students can use this tool to learn about the elements of the hero's journey, analyze a text that follows the hero's journey pattern, or start creating a hero story of their own.
Profile Publisher
Students use the Profile Publisher to draft online social networking profiles, yearbook profiles, and newspaper or magazine profiles for themselves, other real or fictional characters.
CD/DVD Cover Creator
The CD/DVD Cover Creator allows users to type and illustrate CD and DVD covers and related booklets for liner notes and other information. Students can use the tool to create covers for books, music, and films that they explored as well as to create covers for media they compose individually or as a class.
Postcard Creator
The Postcard Creator helps students learn to identify all the typical parts of a postcard, and then generate their own postcard messages by typing information into letter templates. After printing their texts, students can illustrate the front of their postcards in a variety of ways, including drawing, collage, and stickers.
Book Cover Creator
The Book Cover Creator is designed to allow users to type and illustrate front book covers, front and back covers, and full dust jackets. Students can use the tool to create new covers for books that they read as well as to create covers for books they write individually or as a class.
Flip Book
The Flip Book is designed to allow users to type and illustrate tabbed flip books up to ten pages long. Students and teachers can use the flip book for taking notes while reading, making picture books, collecting facts, or creating question and answer booklets.
Printing Press
The interactive Printing Press is designed to assist students in creating newspapers, brochures, and flyers.
The Charlotte Huck Award for Outstanding Fiction for Children is announced today.
Students read and discuss an award-winning book before writing their own story that demonstrates compassion.
Celebrate Digital Learning Day today.
Students reflect on recent learning and the role digital tools and media have played in supporting or enhancing it.
Astronomer Annie Jump Cannon was born today.
Students research a constellation and share their learning using an interactive or mobile app.
Author Matt de la Peña was born today.
Students use an essay by de la Peña as a model for writing their own literacy autobiography.
Author E.B. White was born on this day in 1899.
Author E.B. White, most well-known for his famous children's book, Charlotte's Web, received high acclaim and awards for many of his works of fiction.
Playwright August Wilson was born in 1945.
Students use the Timeline Tool and Drama Map to create a decade-by-decade record and play of their community's history.
Author Tim O'Brien was born on this day.
After reading O'Brien's story "A True War Story" from The Things They Carried, students choose a powerful event from their own lives and map it using the Timeline Tool. They then create a fictional version of this event.
Memorial Day is observed in the United States today.
Observed on the last Monday of May, Memorial Day honors the men and women who died while serving in the United States military. In addition to having celebrations with family and friends, many people visit cemeteries and memorials and place flags on the grave sites of fallen servicemen and women.
Pedro Albizu Campos leads the Puerto Rican Independence movement.
After learning about the story of Pedro Albizu Campos and his commitment to Puerto Rican independence, students research and share their learning about another nationalist figure from around the world.
Gwendolyn Brooks published Bronzeville Boys and Girls in 1956.
After students have read and discussed several poems from Brooks' collection, they create a poetry anthology for their own family, neighborhood, or classroom.