Students suggest and categorize words that they associate with a novel they have recently read, ranging from details about the plot to feelings about a character.
Focusing Reader Response Through Vocabulary Analysis
Developing Reading Plans to Support Independent Reading
Students analyze their past readings and use that knowledge to create reading plans for the future.
A Bear of a Poem: Composing and Performing Found Poetry
Children find favorite words, phrases, and sentences from familiar stories. Working together, they combine their words and phrases to create a poem. The poem is then shared as performance poetry.
Analyzing Symbolism, Plot, and Theme in Death and the Miser
Students apply the analytical skills that they use when reading literature to an exploration of the underlying meaning and symbolism in Hieronymous Bosch's early Renaissance painting Death and the Miser.
As Slippery as an Eel: An Ocean Unit Exploring Simile and Metaphor
Students play with simile and metaphor as they study the ocean and use figurative language to write a class book about it.
Discovering Traditional Sonnet Forms
Students read sonnets, charting the poems' characteristics and using their observations to deduce traditional sonnet forms. They then write original sonnets, using a poem they have analyzed as a model.
Argument, Persuasion, or Propaganda? Analyzing World War II Posters
Students analyze World War II posters, as a group and then independently, to explore how argument, persuasion and propaganda differ.
Ferocious Fighting Fish: An Ocean Unit Exploring Beginning Word Sounds
Focus students' attention on alliteration in this ocean-themed unit. Students explore alliteration in framing texts then compose their own class book to explore figurative language in their own writing.
Completing the Circle: The Craft of Circular Plot Structure
Students identify, explore and apply the elements of circle plot structures to their own stories by using graphic organizers, reading and writing stories, and using checklists to assess their work.
A Significant Influence: Describing an Important Teacher in Your Life
In this project, students write tributes to teachers who have made a profound difference in their lives then publish their work in a class collection.
Bridging Literature and Mathematics by Visualizing Mathematical Concepts
During interactive read-aloud sessions, students identify how an author conveys mathematical information about animals' sizes and abilities. They then conduct research projects focusing on the same mathematical concepts.
Building Vietnam War Scavenger Hunts through Web-Based Inquiry
Students research the effects of the Vietnam war on a specific group of people who were involved. They then create Internet scavenger hunts to share with the class.
Talking, Writing, and Reasoning: Making Thinking Visible with Math Journals
Students explore how their problem-solving strategies work by writing in math journals as they work in small groups to solve a math puzzle with multiple solutions.
Exploring Sets through Math-Related Book Pairs
After reading two math-related books, students investigate their home and school environments to find examples of objects that come in sets and then create their own books on sets.
What If We Changed the Book? Problem-Posing with Sixteen Cows
After reading a piece of math-related children's literature aloud, students pose and solve new problems by asking what-if questions about the events in the story.
Reading Literature in Translation: Beowulf as a Case Study
Using several translations of the same passage of Beowulf, this lesson introduces students to the idea that translation is not an objective practice, but that it involves "imaginative reconstruction."
An Introduction to Beowulf: Language and Poetics
Students are introduced to Old English and the poetic devices of alliteration, kenning, and compounding in preparation for reading the epic poem Beowulf.
Exploring Satire with The Simpsons
This lesson uses an example from popular culture, The Simpsons, as a means to explore the literary technique of satire and to analyze a satirical work.
Using Picture Books to Teach Plot Development and Conflict Resolution
Students read picture books to explore the concepts of plot development and conflict resolution. They first learn about the connections between reading and writing, and then revise their own writing.
Improving Fluency through Group Literary Performance
Students participate in shared reading, choral reading, and readers theater, using books by Bill Martin, Jr. Repeated readings and literary performances help students with their reading accuracy, expression, and rate.