What makes a superhero super? By comparing popular culture superheroes with heroic characters in children's literature, students learn to think critically about character traits, and consider how cultural perspectives influence the kinds of heroes we choose.
Is Superman Really All That Super? Critically Exploring Superheroes
Exploring Friendship With Bridge to Terabithia
Students make predictions about Bridge to Terabithia and its characters, complete character studies, and relate the characters' experiences to their own as they identify ways to make and keep friends.
Fishing for Readers: Identifying and Writing Effective Opening "Hooks"
Good writers "hook" their readers in the very first sentences. In this lesson, students learn how to cast an attention-grabbing hook in their writing to effectively draw in readers' attention.
Media Literacy: Examining the World of Television Teens
Pop culture and the classroom collide in this lesson when students go behind the scenes to analyze a television series for characterization to use in an original television show proposal.
Planning Story Characters Using Interactive Trading Cards
Students use trading cards to examine fictional characters in a story.
Choosing the Right Book: Strategies for Beginning Readers
Students make purposeful choices for their reading materials, thinking about their reasons for reading a book and using strategies to match books to their abilities.
Exploring Author's Voice Using Jane Addams Award-Winning Books
History has many faces in this lesson in which students read Jane Addams Award-winning books to learn about peace, social justice, world community, and equality.
Using Folk Tales: Vowel Influences on the Letter G
Gentle, gigantic, gracefuldo these g words describe the giant in Jack and the Beanstalk? Students will explore the hard and soft g sounds by studying fairy tales and animals.
Flying to Freedom: Tar Beach and The People Could Fly
Students look to the past and use historical context to compare and contrast two characters from folktales.
A Journal for Corduroy: Responding to Literature
Connect home and school, literature and life, as students take a storybook character home with them and take turns writing stories about his visit.
The Big Bad Wolf: Analyzing Point of View in Texts
Was the Big Bad Wolf really all that bad? This lesson encourages students to analyze multiple viewpoints, view texts from different angles, and recognize gaps in narrative.
Using a Word Journal to Create a Personal Dictionary
Students will be the definition of vocabulary experts as they use the skills they learn in this lesson to track, define, and ultimately master unfamiliar words.
Story Map
The Story Map interactive is designed to assist students in prewriting and postreading activities by focusing on the key elements of character, setting, conflict, and resolution.
Profile Publisher
Students use the Profile Publisher to draft online social networking profiles, yearbook profiles, and newspaper or magazine profiles for themselves, other real or fictional characters.
CD/DVD Cover Creator
The CD/DVD Cover Creator allows users to type and illustrate CD and DVD covers and related booklets for liner notes and other information. Students can use the tool to create covers for books, music, and films that they explored as well as to create covers for media they compose individually or as a class.
Postcard Creator
The Postcard Creator helps students learn to identify all the typical parts of a postcard, and then generate their own postcard messages by typing information into letter templates. After printing their texts, students can illustrate the front of their postcards in a variety of ways, including drawing, collage, and stickers.
Book Cover Creator
The Book Cover Creator is designed to allow users to type and illustrate front book covers, front and back covers, and full dust jackets. Students can use the tool to create new covers for books that they read as well as to create covers for books they write individually or as a class.
Flip Book
The Flip Book is designed to allow users to type and illustrate tabbed flip books up to ten pages long. Students and teachers can use the flip book for taking notes while reading, making picture books, collecting facts, or creating question and answer booklets.
Sharon Draper was born on this day in 1952.
Students read a book from one of Draper's trilogies and then meet to discuss their book with students have read the other two books.
The Charlotte Huck Award for Outstanding Fiction for Children is announced today.
Students read and discuss an award-winning book before writing their own story that demonstrates compassion.