Polish organization skills in your youngsters. With this lesson, they are introduced to the trait of organization and participate in activities that reinforce organization. They cut apart a familiar story, receive different...

Sixth graders learn to plan a story by using a story map. They analyze a detailed sample story map and answer 5 questions about it. Then, plan their own story using a story map template.

Plan a Parts of a Book scavenger hunt. Begin by giving your young adventurers a book, and asking them to find the title, author, illustrator, and table of contents. After a discussion of the purpose of each of these items, class members...

Fluency is crucial to reading success. This lesson provides a great technique for increasing fluency. Using Inspiration or Garage Band, learners record themselves reading a passage at their reading level and repeat the process to monitor...

Here is activity 5 from a 7 activity unit on using blogging to create a community of writers. The aim of this activity is to get students writing about what Archaeologists do and how they use material data to study the past. They compose...

Looking for a motivating and creative technology lesson plan? Then this lesson plan is for you! After viewing a movie trailer, middle-schoolers follow that design to create a video preview of a book's story elements. They also create a...

Review subject-verb agreement with your class. Demonstrate the different verb forms when the subject is singular, plural, compound, and an indefinite pronoun. Not too long, this presentation is nonetheless thorough, especially for...

Bring digital storytelling to your language arts class! To begin, learners select their own topic, such as a poem that reflects a life experience they had or a historical figure who interests them. Then they work to create a storyboard...

The Nashua River serves as the focal point of an investigation of the treatment of and care for natural resources. A reading of A River Rand Wild: An Environmental History by Lynne Cherry, launches the study and class members consider...

The contributions of African-Americans to the American Revolution are the focus of this Social Studies and language arts instructional activity. After reading and discussing Linda Crotta Brennan’s The Black Regiment of the American...

The guiding question for this lesson plan is "Do computers and their contents shape who we are?" Open with a selection of Apple's commercials to introduce stereotypes and people's relationships with their computers. Then, read the...

A reading of “Gatsby’s Green Light Beckons a New Set of Strivers,” a New York Times article by Sara Rimer, triggers a discussion of the American Dream and what it means to strive for something. Following the discussion, class members...

Point of view is everything, especially when reporting about the war in Afghanistan. Class members compare and contrast the same event from the war in Afghanistan as reported by five different sources. Learners are also asked to rank the...

Class pairs select a prompt from a provided list and tell (and record) their story to their partner. They then examine linguist William Labov's model for natural narratives, and apply his model to their tale. Next, class members watch...

The PBS film, Bronx Princess, launches a study of complex parent-child relationships. Using the provided reading guide, viewers respond to clips from the film and compare Rocky and Yaa’s relationship to other parent-child relationships....

Why do books end up on the banned book list? How do these banned books contribute to the literary canon? Start by showing the photo slide show, and discussing notably banned books. Then focus on some of the most popular objections:...

Bruce Springsteen’s “My Hometown” and Billy Joel’s “Allentown” motivate young lyricists to craft poems about their own home town. Groups compare the two songs, identifying details, symbols, and conflicts. Individuals then picture a place...

“Rikki-tikki-tavi” provides an opportunity to model for readers how to use background information to enrich understanding of a story. Class members observe animal behavior, listen to biographical background on Rudyard Kipling, study...

Who was Walt Whitman, and what link does he have to president Abraham Lincoln?  After Lincoln's assassination, Whitman wrote "O Captain! My Captain!" This poem and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" are the focus of...

Get your class thinking about advertising with this lesson plan. Over the course of 15 days, your class will discuss advertising techniques, study the concepts of pathos, logos, and ethos, and analyze the persuasive techniques of...

To appreciate the value of seeing and hearing a poetry performance, groups prepare readings of selected poems and then compare and critique their interpretations and videotaped versions of the same poem. Included in the resource are...

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" serves as an exemplar for a mini-instructional activity on semicolons. Working alone or in small groups, class members first circle all the semicolons in the letter, and then...

Explore Japanese society and national identity. Class members share ideas about the Japanese economy and then investigate a series of resources, including an article, a film, a lecture, and a poem, to learn about Japan's Bubble Economy...

"The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson is a great story to share with your class, and this lesson focuses on just that story! The eighth in a fourteen-lesson series on short stories, the plan has learners study some vocabulary, read the...