It's raining cats and dogs! Students explore figurative language through read-alouds, teacher modeling, and student-centered activities, further developing their understanding of the literal versus the metaphorical translations of idioms.

Through a study of Langston Hughes' poetry, students connect his writing to his place in history.

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.

Based on the Guided Comprehension Model developed by Maureen McLaughlin and Mary Beth Allen, this lesson introduces students to the strategy of evaluating, using the Meeting of the Minds technique.

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

"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.

Questions about weather clear up when students use what they learned from their books to create a presentation to share with the rest of the class.

Interaction and adventure draws high school and elementary school students together as they analyze stories about the Lewis and Clark expedition.

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

Students make predictions about the stories and analyze story elements, compare and contrast the different stories, distinguish between fact and opinion, and draw conclusions supported by evidence from their readings.

Y'all set down a spell and learn ‘bout dialects!" In other words, your students will use The Color Purple to explore dialect and how it reveals information about the characters.

Students will be crawling all over this assignment when they use illustrations and text to learn about life from a bug's point of view.

Students compare the traits fact and fiction by using a Venn diagram to compare fiction and nonfiction books about Native Americans.

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.

Students read "After Twenty Years" by O. Henry, use a word map to identify characters' qualities or traits, discuss the characters' feelings and actions, and reflect upon these in journals.

Students tell their life stories in this lesson about autobiographies based on family photographs.

Like Junie B. Jones, students will be saying "Wait till you hear this" after listening to a Junie B. story and creating mystery boxes to help retell the story.

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