The fifth installment in a writing unit that culminates with a Hyperstudio illustrated group story project, this plan is ripe with ideas for ways to design group writing projects for elementary writers. Use the whole unit as a base from...

Ask your learners to synthesize what they know about Waiting for the Biblioburro by writing a well-organized paragraph. Young writers focus on using transition words and including specific details in their paragraphs. The plan allows for...

There are some words out there that just make you say, "Wow!" Encourage your class to find and use these words in their writing to make their work more interesting and complex. This packet goes through the writing process, beginning with...

Through grand conversation, help scholars identify issues that harm the Earth and find solutions on how to solve them. After voting—on what your class deems the most important problem—stretch writing muscles with a problem-solution...

Use folk tales as inspiration for learning about and using personification in creative writing. Learners brainstorm together in order to practice personification before writing their own poems or paragraphs about a household object.

How do you determine what law enforcement agency has jurisdiction when a crime has been committed? That's the challenge facing class members in this role-play activity.

How did the Klu Klux Klan manage to gain so many members during the 1920s? Class members examine Klan documents and promotional materials to gain an understanding of the propaganda techniques used to attract members.

Young scholars investigate new vocabulary words with a fun, collaborative activity. Given a deck of word cards, pairs of students flip over one at a time and independently look up the term in a dictionary. They then take turns rolling a...

How well do you know your affixes? Find out how proficient your learners are with a game that requires them to define various affixes and use them to create words that will go into sentences.

In order to give young scientists experience with critical thinking skills, introduce them to a current controversy and prepare them to debate. Choose a topic, such as genetically modified organisms, and assign groups to represent...

Lesson ten in this unit for the book Bullfrogs at Magnolia Circle, prepares third graders to begin writing an informational paragraph about the adaptations of bullfrogs. First, young writers work either independently or in pairs to...

Class members identify gender-specific roles and expectations in American society today by surveying adults, examining modern entertainment, and researching historical figures.

Play this fun adaptation of the game Memory. Young scholars flip over high-frequency word cards, read them aloud, and keep them if they match.

Assist pupils as they learn to separate base words and affixes and combine them to determine the meaning of words. Partners practice with cards that include words with affixes.

To practice reading high-frequency words fluently, learners play a fishing game at a learning center. They take turns fishing; each fish contains a single high-frequency word. To keep the fish they caught, they must be able to read the...

Scholars play high-frequency word baseball, pretending to be a pitcher and a batter. Players take turns choosing baseballs with high-frequency words printed on them. If they read the word correctly, they move to the next base until they...

Peers take turns timing each other for one minute and reading as many high-frequency cards as possible.

Here is an interesting take on the old timed-fluency activity. In pairs, learners work together to see how fast they can read two sets of high-frequency words. Peer one reads a word from his list; peer two works fast to find that word in...

In pairs, scholars draw cards, read the word, and identify its root. Learners place the card on a tree-themed worksheet to sort words by their roots.

Invite learners to determine which affix and base word combinations create new words. This activity allows pupils to play around and create words that match specific meanings.

Go bowling for high-frequency words! Partners take turns drawing bowling ball cards and read the word printed on them. If the learner is successful, they record their score on a scorecard.

Learners read as many high-frequency words as possible in a given amount of time. Peer one reads a word from a list, and peer two points to the corresponding word as they are seen on the table. This activity is timed and peer evaluated.

Using a set of high-frequency word flashcards, partners time each other to see how many words they can read in one minute. They place correctly read words in a yes pile and incorrectly in a no pile. Once a minute is up, partners count...

Taking turns, learners time each other as they read a list of high-frequency words and track progress.