Students explore their towns' landmarks, symbols, and people; look at brochures and other informational tools; practice writing for a specific audience and revising; and work collaboratively to create a brochure.
All About Our Town: Using Brochures to Teach Informational Writing
All About Alliteration: Responding to Literature Through a Poetry Link
Studied students stupefy! Students learn about alliteration by listening to an alliterative read-aloud and apply the knowledge they gain to the creation of their own poem and illustration.
Seeing Integration From Different Viewpoints
What does the world look like through someone else's eyes? Guide students in using colorful paper glasses to examine a story of school desegregation from multiple perspectives.
Let It Grow: An Inquiry-Based Organic Gardening Research Project
Students learn about organic gardening by developing their own research questions, conducting research, gardening at their school, creating signs about their plants, and presenting their research to the class.
Review Redux: Introducing Literary Criticism Through Reception Moments
Literature takes on a life of its own as students take a hands-on approach to exploring A Raisin in the Sun for cultural and historical context.
Collaborating, Writing, Linking: Using Wikis to Tell Stories Online
Students become online authors in this lesson in which they write and post a short story using wiki technology.
Skimming and Scanning: Using Riddles to Practice Fact Finding Online
Students will learn to skim and scan to make sure they don't flounder when they're surfing the Internet for facts to help them complete riddles about the United States.
Using Pictures to Build Schema for Social Studies Content
How do you read an image? Students find out in this lesson in which they "read" several images of the Boston Massacre to better understand the event and recognize effects of propaganda.
A World of Readers: Libraries Around the World
Bookworms will enjoy the bytes they find in this lesson as they research and share information about online library services in places around the world.
Shared Experiences, Individual Impressions: Buddies Create PowerPoint Stories
Stories and snapshots of school-related experiences are the perfect sources of inspiration for students as they create PowerPoint presentations with the help of an older student.
Developing Searching, Skimming, and Scanning Skills With Internet Bingo
Student pairs aim to be the first team to call out "bingo" in this lesson in which they use skimming and scanning to locate information about ancient Greece and Rome.
Let's Read It Again: Comprehension Strategies for English-Language Learners
Help Spanish-speaking English-language learners unlock the mysteries of their new language by using a bilingual book to recognize unfamiliar words and construct meaning from the text.
Crit Lit for Kids: From Critical Consciousness to Service Learning
Students take their ideas from the classroom page to the community pavement when they participate in a service-learning project based on their multimedia presentations.
Writers' Workshop: The Biographical Sketch
Students use the faces and places they learn about in their research to write a biography about a contemporary or historical figure.
Becoming History Detectives Using Shakespeare's Secret
Is the case closed on the authorship of Shakespeare's plays? Student history detectives explore the evidence for and against one of the possible alternatives, Edward deVere, using the novel Shakespeare's Secret plus a variety of online sources.
Reading and Writing About Pollution to Understand Cause and Effect
Students get to write a whale of a tale when they complete a graphic organizer sequencing the journey of a mountain fish to a polluted waterway.
Guided Comprehension in Action: Teaching Summarizing With the Bio-Cube
Students learn the ins and outs of writing biographies by researching a contemporary or historical figure and writing a summary.
Casting Shadows Across Literacy and Science
Shadows, shadows, everywhere! In this lesson, students read fiction, informational text, and poetry about shadows to extend their knowledge of the concept before casting their own shadow poetry.
This is My Story: Encouraging Students to Use a Unique Voice
What did the wolf think of Red Riding Hood? Once Upon a Fairy Tale offers his side of the story and more, providing vivid examples of how voice enlivens narrative. After comparing versions of the story, students apply the concept of voice to Fractured Fairy Tales and other writing activities.
Zines for Kids: Multigenre Texts About Media Icons
Special edition! Students use ReadWriteThink tools to create magazines about prominent figures using a variety of writing genres and styles.