What do Jeep advertisements and Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath have in common? They both employ the art of the extended metaphor! Using the Six-Trait Writing model, learners begin to work on their own extended metaphors. Development...

Combine participial phrases and creative writing with this lesson, which is equally helpful for writing skills and conventions. After a mini-lesson on participial phrases and reading the picture book Dancing in the Wings, pupils use a...

Second graders interact with the story of Alexander's horrible day by connecting it to their lives. They practice predicting, writing paragraphs, reading aloud, discussing his problems, making a card to cheer him up, and designing a pair...

Students participate in games to practice language skills.

Students participate in a cross-age reading program. In this language arts lesson, students choose a class of younger children and read them the book The Legend of the Bluebonnet. Students reflect upon their service project in a journal.

Students inspect divisibility rules. In this divisibility rules instructional activity, students study the relationship between factorization and the divisibility rules for 2, 3, 5, 6, 9, and 10. Students read One Hundred Hungry Ants and...

Vamos a escribir! Your older learners will love writing a children's book for learners at the elementary level. The resource suggests having small groups write their stories and create PowerPoint slides with illustrations, but this can...

Seventh graders, after defining/brainstorm the task, divide up into groups and are assigned to an alternative energy source (wind, solar, or water) to research. They complete a presentation with visuals on their findings from their...

Students complete pre reading, writing, during reading, and interdisciplinary activities for the book Fishing Fun. In this reading lesson plan, students complete journal entries, go over vocabulary, answer short answer questions, have...

Third graders pretend a major trading card company has asked them to help gather information on animals who live in the rainforest. In groups, they select an animal and use the sources given to them to gather the information. They create...

Second graders read the story, "The Foolish, Timid Rabbit," as part of a unit on appearances. After reading with partners, they write their own stories that include elements about some forms of matter from their science studies. Students...

Students create a free from poem on the topic of friendship. They read examples of free form poetry to gather ideas. Through the use of a graphic organizer, students generate a list of friendship characteristics which is used to create...

students draw what they visualize after the teacher reads a page from the book Oak Trees. They share their pictures and compare how they visualized the tree being described.

Students read "Elmer" by David McKee. They answer comprehension questions and discuss how Elmer looks and how he is different from the elephants they see in the zoo. They complete a project in which they celebrate their individual...

First graders imagine the house they live in. They think about the colors, materials, shape, size and location of their home. Students read and discuss the book "Houses." They perform this book as a Reader's Theater using a script.

Students describe James Whitcomb Riley's poems and identify the themes they portray. In this poetry lesson plan, students read the history of James Whitcomb Riley and read some of his poems.

Students encounter the format of a podcast and plan what content they will include. They work in small groups or with the whole class to develop an outline. Students practice reading their scripts to other students.

Connect to real-world experiences by having your primary learners create an award certificate based upon literal and inferential information from a story. They present the award to a character from a story and explain the criteria used....

Turn your classroom into a music studio as groups work together to determine why music sounds different when performed live versus a recording. After listening to some different music, each group picks a poem, creates a recording, and...

Introduce your middle schoolers to the lives of past Native Americans. First, learners work together to put photographs in a sequence. Then, using their sequence, they create stories to share with the whole class. No matter how old your...

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...

Eighth graders explore the Civil War, and people and events surrounding the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and his funeral procession.

Over the course of a week, class groups interview one another, search for similarities and differences within the group, and then prepare a PowerPoint introduction of their group for the entire class. An interesting way to incorporate...

Beverly Cleary is the fabulous author focused on, in this author study. Students conduct Internet Research in order to find out as much as they can about Ms. Cleary. They then use their findings and the Garageband program to create a...