This lesson teaches intermediate students to "use the experts" to learn how to revise to create sharp, sensory-rich experiences for their readers.
Creating a Feast for the Senses With Mentor Texts
Show-Me Sentences
This lesson teaches students how to revise dull "telling" sentences into vivid, descriptive "showing" sentences.
A Portrait of Our World: Making Connections and Developing Comprehension
Students engage in carousel walks, character analyses, global explorations, and genre studies while using valuable language arts strategies to build higher-level comprehension skills.
Engineering the Perfect Poem by Using the Vocabulary of STEM
Students research engineering careers and create poetry to understand the vocabulary of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics).
What's Under the Slide? Making Inferences Using Microscopes
Students hone their critical thinking skills by learning how to make inferences from textual clues.
What is Poetry? Contrasting Poetry and Prose
Students often find poetry frustrating and meaningless. By helping students think critically about the differences between poetry and prose, this introduction sets the stage for different strategies for comprehending poetic texts.
A Prereading Strategy: Using the Vocabulary, Language, Prediction (VLP) Approach
Students learn content area vocabulary and increase reading comprehension using the Vocabulary, Language, Prediction (VLP) approach.
Reading Through Different Lenses: Making Text Connections Across the Curriculum
Students learn to comprehend the linguistic text styles of different content areas and use the interactive ReadWriteThink Notetaker tool as the teacher models the exercise.
Jazz Up Writing Workshop: Writing Biographies of African American Jazz Musicians
During writing workshop, students research, write, revise, and share their own comprehensive biographies of African American jazz musicians.
Talking About Books to Improve Comprehension
This lesson is a conversation-starter! In this lesson, students learn about striking up deep-thought conversations and staying on topic in the form of a book talk.
Rain, Ice, Steam: Using Reading to Support Inquiry About the Water Cycle
Water is always moving in a continuous cycle from liquid to solid to gas and back again. Students study this never-ending cycle through shared readings, center activities, and experiments.
When I Was Young In...A Literature to Language Experience
Past meets present in this lesson in which students practice verb tense when they write personal short stories that they then publish in a flip book.
Integrating Literacy Into the Study of the Earth's Surface
Water covers 71% of the earth's surface—does it get the instructional time it deserves in your busy curriculum? Students wade right in to the study of bodies of water as they read and discuss science trade books and work together to develop Readers Theater scripts based on selected titles.
Descriptive Writing and the 100th Day of School
Students write descriptions of 100th day bottles they create at home, write clues about their bottles for a guessing game, practice descriptive writing, and create a class book.
Using Word Storms to Explore Vocabulary and Encourage Critical Thinking
Students learn that dogs are more than just pets in this lesson, which teaches them to use research and vocabulary-acquisition strategies to learn and write about working dogs.
Nature Reflections: Interactive Language Practice for English-Language Learners
Students whose first language is not English reflect on nature through readings, a visit to a green area, and bookmaking using the writing process and peer feedback.
Learning About Research and Writing Using the American Revolution
Students across the board will get a kick out of researching a historical figure from the American Revolution to create an acrostic poem.
Rooting Out Meaning: Morpheme Match-Ups in the Primary Grades
In this lesson, students use morphemesEnglish words that have been formed by combining common word partsto explore word meanings.
I Wonder: Writing Scientific Explanations With Students
Students choose a question to explore, research it using a variety of resources, organize their information on a TCF chart, and then collaboratively write a class scientific explanation.
How-To Writing: Motivating Students to Write for a Real Purpose
It's not easy surviving fourth grade (or third or fifth)! In this lesson, students brainstorm survival tips for future fourth graders and incorporate those tips into an essay.