Students learn about memory by doing a memory-writing exercise, studying the brain to understand how it affects memory, reading Li-Young Lee's poem "Mnemonic," and creating projects to demonstrate their understanding.
Discovering Memory: Li-Young Lee's Poem "Mnemonic" and the Brain
Website Planning in a Bilingual Classroom
Students complete a family survey and plan a website to share the responses, increasing their understanding and appreciation of their own families and cultures, and their classmates as well.
Textmasters: Shaking Up Textbook Reading in Science Classrooms
Engage students in content area reading with the Textmasters strategy, which allows students to collaborate with their peers in different roles that enable better understanding of the content.
I Used My Own Words! Paraphrasing Informational Texts
Tell me about it in your own words! If students can paraphrase the information they have read, then you—and they—can be confident that they understand it.
Four Simple Steps to Small-Group Guided Writing
Students will go batty about the three writing strategies they learn in this lesson centered on Nicola Davies' Bat Loves the Night.
Earth Verse: Using Science in Poetry
Students shape up their reading, writing, and listening skills in this lesson by creating original diamante, acrostic, and shape poems about science.
Critical Literacy in Action: Multimodal Texts on Global Warming
Students will really warm up to this lesson about global warming as they study multimedia materials and use a variety of comprehension strategies.
Hoax or No Hoax? Strategies for Online Comprehension and Evaluation
Are your students easily fooled? You'll find out in this lesson in which students carefully and critically examine hoax websites to determine their validity.
Nature Study Outdoor Treasure Hunts (with Spanish language option)
Students take a walk on the wild side when they research an animal and create a scavenger hunt activity for their classmates.
Exploring Cost and Savings Using Children's Literature
Students make sense of dollars and cents when they study the importance of saving and budgeting in this lesson.
ABC Bookmaking Builds Vocabulary in the Content Areas
V is for vocabulary. A content area unit provides the theme for a specialized ABC book, as students select, research, define, and illustrate a word for each alphabet letter.
Persuasive Essay: Environmental Issues
How can we convince others to agree with us on important issues? In this lesson, students explore relevant environmental issues and gather information to write persuasive essays.
Teaching Audience Through Interactive Writing
Through interactive writing, students work together and then independently to create invitation letters for a group of their peers and their families.
Weather: A Journey in Nonfiction
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.
Fact or Fiction: Learning About Worms Using Diary of a Worm
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.
Telling a Story About Me: Young Children Write Autobiographies
Students tell their life stories in this lesson about autobiographies based on family photographs.
Astronomy Poetry: Combining Poetry With the Content Areas
Students' responses to this lesson will be out of this world after they've researched astronomy to write poetry and compile a poetry book.
Using Science Texts to Teach the Organizational Features of Nonfiction
Students explore organizational features of nonfiction science. Students then work together to create a two-page spread using those features to present information about their local environment.
Predicting and Gathering Information With Nonfiction Texts
Students take a walk on the wild side when they develop an understanding of nonfiction texts with hands-on experiences and intense analysis.
Bringing Economic Vocabulary to Life Through Video Posters
Imagine if vocabulary could come alive with the click of a button! Students create video posters to demonstrate knowledge of new economics vocabulary.