As your emerging readers are learning the alphabet, set them up for success with strategies like these that incorporate multiple contexts and learning styles. Focusing on the letter g, write it clearly on the board. Model the /g/...

Use these strategies to connect letter pronunciation, sound, word examples, and recognition, focusing on the letter t. Emerging readers examine the letter and listen to you say the /t/ sound. As you explain how to do it, they try...

As your scholars begin learning letters of the alphabet, help them connect sound, pronunciation, word examples, and letter recognition using these strategies. Focusing on the letter i, begin by drawing it on the board. Can scholars...

What can young scientists discover from dissecting an owl pellet? Explore the owl food chain, beginning with an introduction to these predatory birds. Suggested strategies here include creating a podcast and purchasing a poster, however...

Interrogatives—who, what, where, when, why, and how—are the focus of a grammar worksheet that reinforces writing questions and using auxiliary verbs. 

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...

Dazai Osamu’s short story, “A Sound of Hammering” is the focus of a three-day investigation of modern Japanese literature and life in post-World War II Japan. The events in Osamu’s story mirror those in his own life, and give a...

Learn the moral of the story with a series of activities about Aesop's fables. Focusing on The Contest Between the Sun and the Wind, learners complete a graphic organizer to discuss who, what, how, and why the events occur. Additionally,...

How would you feel if you lost your belly button? Read about Billy Brown in Billy Brown and the Belly Button Beastie by Bobby and Sherry Norfolk. Young learners retell the story, answer questions, focus on the letter B and...

A cute folktale from Bali tells the story of Gecko, Elephant, and Buffalo, and Gecko's struggle to sleep. After reading Go to Sleep, Gecko, learners focus on comprehension questions, singing and learning about geckos, building...

Use a West African folktale to practice several different skills in your first grade classroom. Learners read The Clever Monkey Rides Again and focus on rhyming words, reading comprehension, measurement, art, movement, and word...

In a multidisciplinary lesson plan, you will focus your instruction around the West African folktale, Anansi Goes to Lunch by Bobby and Sherry Norfolk while your little learners sing songs, play games, participate in a grand...

Delve into a Bengali folktale with a series of reading comprehension activities. Before kids read The Ghost Catcher, they discuss the concept of reflections and mirrors. They then answer comprehension questions about the characters and...

Reinforce reading comprehension with a instructional activity about The Archer and the Sun, a Chinese folktale. Kids learn some background information about Chinese culture before reading the story, and answer literacy...

Turn your youngsters into little editors with an exercise that focuses on some of the most basic and important writing conventions: capitalization and punctuation. Learners fix five sentences and then rewrite a sentence using...

Do your young readers have difficulty visualizing what they read? Although the activity described here is for The Call of the Wild, the strategy could be used with any narrative. At the conclusion of each chapter of Jack London’s novel,...

Pogrom, schlepped, meshuga. Kapo, reich, Wehrmacht. As part of a unit study of Maus I and II, readers use a list-group-label (LGL) strategy for vocabulary drawn from Art Spiegelman's famous graphic novels. The focus of the activity is...

Before reading Anne Frank's diary, discuss stereotypes with your class. This guide is a great prereading activity; pupils complete a list of incomplete sentences in order to showcase common stereotypes. Then, they complete the seven...

Ding! The bell just rang. Give your intermediate Spanish language learners this bell-ringer activity to get them started. This short paragraph focuses on conjugating both regular and irregular verbs in the future tense. 

Make verb conjugation second nature to your beginning Spanish speakers. This short, 10-question practice opportunity focuses on irregular verbs in the present tense. After your class completes the sheet, have them partner up for some...

Ding! The bell just rang, and you want to get your class focused and ready to go! Consider giving them this short activity as a bell-ringer. After learning about stem-changing verbs in the present tense, they do their best to complete...

Consider using this short activity as a bell-ringer. Beginning Spanish learners read the paragraph and conjugate the verbs in parentheses to complete the sentences. Although the focus is on grammar, read through the paragraph in English...

Plus one volleyball begins like a regular game of volleyball. The receiving team must play the ball twice on their side before returning it over the net. Now the serving team must play the ball three times before returning it over the...

“A good exercise for the heart is to bend down and help another up.” Black Tiger Academy’s martial arts instructional activity three of 20 focuses on cardiovascular exercise and activities that get that heart pumping. There are quite a...