Encourage your young citizens to make a difference. Using Tyson Miller's Dream of a Nation: Inspiring Ideas for a Better America as a starting point, class members watch documentaries, investigate issues, and then write letters to...

Strengthen your high schoolers' writing with a series of steps for writing successfully. With sections on organizing an essay, choosing a topic, crafting a thesis statement, and revising a draft, the lesson encourages your class to...

You'll be a star at your next grade level meeting with an educational unit on Louis Sachar's Holes. Based on both the novel and film, the lessons include applications to language arts with character studies and movie reviews; social...

Get the scoop with a fun, engaging newspaper project. After analyzing the parts of a newspaper, including the headline, subtitles, and pictures or images, young journalists get to work by writing their own stories in a newspaper article...

Testing, testing! Following the provided script, class members are asked to create a radio commercial, complete with sound effects and background music.

If you'd like your class to write in varied sentence patterns, use a learning exercise focused on adverb clauses to enhance their writing. After reading a short explanation and example of adverb clauses, young grammarians underline the...

Readers respond to a series of questions focused onJuliet Marillier's young adult novel Wildwood Dancing, and crafted to reflect the levels in Bloom's Taxonomy.

After completing Juliet Marillier's young adult novel Wildwood Dancing, class members rewrite a traditional fairy tale, making three significant changes to illustrate a theme of their choosing.

As part of a study of Juliet Marillier's Wildwood Dancing, class members create vocabulary squares for words drawn from the story.

Considering including Juliet Marillier's young adult novel, Wildwood Dancing as part of your language arts curriculum? Check out an overview that examines some of the themes and issues presented by the novel. 

If you could pick characteristics you would want your child to possess, what would they be? To better understand Okonkwo, one of the key characters in Things Fall Apart, class groups engage in an activity that asks them to consider this...

Promote critical thinking and literary analysis with a short activity. Readers of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart respond to a series of questions modeled on Bloom's Taxonomy.    

Do “memories need to be shared?" Are “memories…forever?" Would you give up memory to live in a perfect world? Introduce a unit centered on Lois Lowry’s utopian/dystopian novel The Giver with a series of activities that has groups...

A good gift is hard to find. A “worn truth,” perhaps, as Billy Collins says in his poem, “The Lanyard,” but true nonetheless. After a study of Collins’ tribute to a mother’s love, young poets select an object that sends them “into the...

After finishing The Red Badge of Courage, readers complete a grammar worksheet  to identify the chain of events in the plot, the enduring issues, and major themes of Stephen Crane's novel.

If figurative language makes your kids feel blue or under the weather, use an activity focused on idioms to help them feel on top of the world. Kids complete a chart with seven idiomatic phrases, adding the meaning of each along with an...

What's the difference between the main idea of a text and the topic? Take kids through the process of literary analysis with a presentation about finding the main idea and supporting details. Additionally, it guides learners through...

What important facts about Dr. Seuss influenced the Read Across America movement...? This is the driving question of a research project that requires scholars to find information about Dr. Seuss' life and work. Class...

Did you know that prior to the American Revolution, Alabama was a part of the British empire and called New West Florida? Class members research the economic, political, and social realities of this territory and compare...

As an introduction to the major themes of Robert Cormier's Tunes for Bears to Dance to, class members complete an anticipation guide and share their responses in groups.

Turn your classroom into a pig sty with a instructional activity based on the Appalachian folktale The Pig Who Went Home on Sunday. Similar to the story of The Three Little Pigs, the folktale tells a story of four pigs who leave...

Ribbit ribbit! Hop through a series of activities based on A Tale of Two Frogs. Kids read the Russian folktale and answer reading comprehension questions before working on phonics exercises, tracing dotting lines to make a path...

Learn about the animals of Australia with a language arts lesson about an Australian folktale called, Why Koala Has a Stumpy Tail. After reading the story as a class, kids discuss events and characters from the book, retell the...

The Magic Pot by Patricia Coombs is the theme of this multidisciplinary lesson plan. Early readers first take part in a read aloud and grand conversation about the story's details. Then, they get to work practicing their skills in...