After examining recipes written based on students' favorite fairy tales, students research a recipe related to their favorite story, book, or fairy tale and include it in a classroom recipe book.
A Recipe for Writing: Fairy Tale Feasts
Boars and Baseball: Making Connections
In this lesson, students will make text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections after reading In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson. After sharing and discussing connections, students choose and plan a project that makes a personal connection to the text.
Writing Acrostic Poems with Thematically Related Texts in the Content Areas
Students read thematically related texts, scaffolded from simple to complex, to help them gather necessary concept vocabulary and background knowledge in a content area. They then write acrostic poems to organize and present their learning in a creative way.
Learning about Clouds with Haikus
Using a mobile app or Interactive activity, students write haikus describing various types of clouds that they have studied.
Greetings from the Biomes of the World
To share their research on biomes, students use iPads to create postcards from all over the world.
Getting Graphic with Alternative Energy Sources
After researching alternative sources of energy, students create online comic books to present their information.
A Blast from the Past with Nuclear Chemistry
After researching the history and basic facts of a nuclear chemistry topic, students utilize the Web 2.0 tool Timetoast to create an electronic timeline that they use to present their research to the class.
Fashion Fun with Fossil Fuels
After researching specific fossil fuel issues, students create their own clothing brands that express their opinions about the issues and then share their information and clothing line using either PowerPoint or Prezi.
Trading Information about Minerals Through Trading Cards
Using the free Trading Cards Mobile App, students create trading cards to share properties of various minerals with their classmates and connect the use of minerals to their own lives.
Poppin' Fun with Physical and Chemical Changes
Students will enjoy learning about physical and chemical changes as they turn their own photos into a narrated video using the iPad app SonicPics to illustrate (and eat) their results from a popcorn lab.
Investigating Animals: Using Nonfiction for Inquiry-based Research
Inspired by their curiosity about animals, students work together to research an animal of their choice and present the information they gather to an authentic audience.
Myth and Truth: Independence Day
By exploring myths and truths surrounding Independence Day, students think critically about commonly believed stories regarding the beginning of the Revolutionary War and the Independence Day holiday.
How Big Are Martin's Big Words? Thinking Big about the Future
Inspired by the book Martin's Big Words, students explore information on Dr. King to think about his "big" words, then they write about their own "big" words and dreams.
Writing Reports in Kindergarten? Yes!
This lesson encourages young students to see themselves as writers with a message to convey. Three types of reports are provided to show what kindergartners and emergent writers can do.
Seasonal Haiku: Writing Poems to Celebrate Any Season
After listening to haiku poetry, students use seasonal descriptive words to write their own haiku, following the traditional format. They then publish their poems by mounting them on illustrated backgrounds.
Listen, Look, and Learn: An Information-Gathering Process
After listening to and discussing the story Score One for the Sloths, primary students research the sloth. Students use a variety of resources, including an information wheel graphic organizer.
Read Across America Day: Celebrate a Nation of Diverse Readers
Bring the celebration of reading and literacy into your classroom, library, school, and home all year long.
Mystery Cube
The Mystery Cube helps students identify and summarize story elements in this popular genre. It can be used as a postreading or prewriting activity.
Trading Card Creator
This tool provides a fun and useful way to explore a variety of topics such as a character in a book, a person or place from history, or even a physical object. An excellent tool to for summarizing or as a prewriting exercise for original stories.
Theme Poems
Formerly known as Shape Poems, this online tool allows elementary students to write poems in various shapes.