Meant for use with Maya Angelou's first autobiographical volume I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the materials here are designed for a homeschool setting, but they'd suit any classroom or text. Graphic organizers, chapter summary...

Teaching tools designed to support student-centered literature study. Geared toward homeschoolers reading Harper Lee's book To Kill a Mockingbird, I would use these in my classroom. The materials are applicable to any text: graphic...

Are you struggling to get a rich discussion going between your learners? Use these questions to spark a natural conversation about advertising and the media. Learners pair up, and each speaker gets a different set of questions to ask...

Blow your pupils' minds with information about some of the world's most awesome natural occurrences: volcanos. Class members read a short article and respond to included questions. The focus of the resource is on understanding and...

What would it like to be the first person to achieve something? Read about Althea Gibson, the first black tennis player to win a Grand Slam title, to win at Wimbledon, and more. Class members respond to questions to demonstrate...

Teach your kids about FANBOYS! Coordinating conjunctions, or FANBOYS, join two independent clauses to make a compound sentence, but don't forget the comma! Review this popular comma rule, and give your learners this short worksheet. An...

Use this entertaining worksheet in your class after a lesson on proverbs or as a fun activity after a test. Learners read each question and think of the proverb or expression that best fits the description. Have them work in teams or...

Challenge your middle schoolers' critical thinking and spelling skills with this fun activity. Each question prompts students to find a word that begins or ends with a certain letter and has a certain number of letters. You could use...

In this prefixes instructional activity, students learn how the addition of one of seven common prefixes changes the meaning of a word. Students answer 15 questions about the use of these seven prefixes.

This worksheet starts out on a strong note by using a humorous video called "My Blackberry Is Not Working" from BBC One to teach parody. While they watch the short video, viewers fill out a chart about the electronic brands, noting any...

In ten questions, this advertising analysis learning exercise addresses audience, persuasive techniques like logos, pathos, and ethos, as well as the purpose of the commercial. This is useful as homework while watching television, and it...

"African Phoenix" is a poem with strong imagery and voice. The class will read two poems then draw an image of what they feel the poems mean. This is a good way to spark critical analysis.

What is happening to our newspapers? In the context of the current trends of media and the ever-declining print news industry, this handout includes two political cartoons for pupils to analyze, both created by artists working for...

Challenge your students with this activity on misplaced and dangling modifiers. This 20 question worksheet could be used after a lesson on this topic to cement students' understanding.

Does your class dread using semicolons? Use this resource to join two independent clauses using either a comma, semicolon, or colon. Several examples and six practice sentences are available at the bottom for learners to choose the...

A great review of possesive nouns and how to add apostrophes. Clearly demonstrating where to place the apostrophe for different nouns, the resource also notes some tricky exceptions. Reinforce the concept with a little practice putting...

Review where quotation marks belong and what they are used to indicate. From direct speech to in-text citations, young writers will find this worksheet quite useful. Several exercises at the bottom, along with a key, give learners...

A Tale of Two Cities begins with one of literature's most memorable paragraphs; see if you can complete it, sentence by sentence, in this quiz! Most questions are fill-in-the-blank, but the juxtaposition makes this easier.

What would school be like if you couldn't teach lessons that require technology? Would it benefit the class? Would it hold them back? Have your learners read this article and answer the basic reading comprehension questions. Then have...

High-interest content captures your most reluctant readers and class participants. Lady Gaga's Born This Way Foundation, in collaboration with Harvard University, seeks to nurture a culture of kindness and reduce bullying. Excerpts from...

With a series of pictures you are transported to Chicago's Skywalk. Read about this magnificent tourist attraction and answer the reading comprehension questions provided. Extend this activity by having your class write about other...

Should your dog be watching tV? Read the article and then fill in the blanks by memory. Encourage a friendly debate: would you get DogTV for your beloved pet?

Can you guess how many hits YouTube gets in one day? If you said two billion, you're wrong. If you said three billion, you're getting closer, but you're still over a billion hits away! Use this article to bring current events into the...

Inspire your class to write about role models and personal heroes with this resource from The Learning Network. Class members read a New York Times article excerpt about basketball star Jeremy Lin and how he inspired the author. After...