In this alternative to the traditional book report, students report on their novel choices using Facebook-like pages.

In this lesson, students practice a way to communicate without words by using a glyph. They create a name card using information about themselves. Students also interpret glyphs made by others.

Students will develop their summarizing skills while learning about local history. They will learn to consider audience while selecting topics, conducting research and interviews, and writing historical markers for their town.

Writing professional reviews teaches students to understand audience, content, and publication guidelines. In this lesson, students put these into practice as professional writers critiquing, designing, and publishing reviews on Amazon.com.

After reading the book ¡Si, Se Puede!/Yes, We Can!: Janitor Strike in L.A., students learn about labor unions, strikes, and organizing for change. Students interview staff members in their school to learn about their daily work life, and write persuasive advocacy letters.

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.

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.

Students will participate in Collaborative Reasoning in small groups to discuss and think critically about issues of social justice and diversity by reading current events informational articles.

Students observe how language features vary when shifting from an informal to a formal style or vice versa. By engaging in style shifting in both speech and writing, students become aware of how we all change language styles depending on the contexts in which we are speaking or writing.

Students read and discuss a selection of poems from Jacqueline Woodson's Brown Girl Dreaming to explore varying views on the process of desegregation in America.

Students build classroom community as they get to know each other and their teacher better by sharing what they like to do outside school.

Students work together to create classroom rules by brainstorming why they are at school and what they need while they are there.

This lesson engages children in using writing to their families as a persuasive tool to get what they want and need.

This lesson encourages children to explore authentic reasons for writing by writing messages to their family in a family message journal.

This lesson introduces Family Message Journals—a teacher-tested tool for encouraging family involvement and supporting writing to reflect and to learn.

Students build positive memories of literacy activities when they take turns taking home a book bag stuffed with items to encourage literacy interactions with their families.

Students bring the print-rich environment of the community into the classroom through the use of environmental print, enabling emergent readers to delight in the realization that they are indeed readers.

Students use their communication and writing skills as they interview a partner, write an article about them, and create a multimodal presentation to introduce their partner to the class.