Students gain an awareness for the work of Alexander Calder, study a variety of utilitarian objects and discuss their purposes, and create graphic of a utilitarian piece using computer graphic software.

Compare and contrast the characters of Gemma and Becca from Briar Rose. Using a Venn diagram (not included but easy to create), readers will explore the characters. Not much direction or explanation is included here. 

In this graphic organizer worksheet, students fill in a ladder type graphic organizer with the causes and effects in a story. They fill in 6 sets of causes and effects.

In this graphic organizer worksheet, students complete an SQ3R sheet. They record the topic or story title before filling in the columns with the Survey, Question , Read, and Retell titles.

What questions should your pupils ask when examining a topic? Cover who, what, where, when, why, and how with a graphic organizer. Kids will like that the graphic organizer is in the shape of a giant question mark!

Young readers get to the root of unfamiliar vocabulary with a collaborative learning activity. Given a deck of root word cards and copies of a graphic organizer, pairs of students take turns flipping over cards and brainstorming...

The design of good graphic organizers indicate the relative importance of the information collected. This biography graphic organizer is a good one because the focus is more on events in the subject's life, the whys and whats, rather...

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...

Whether you are teaching mainstream, advanced, or intervention language arts classes, you will find something helpful in a thorough writing packet. It includes prompts, rubrics, responses, helpful hints, graphic organizers, and many...

Is trickery ever justified? Is it okay to steal from someone who has stolen from you? Puss, from Puss in Boots, and Jack, from Jack and the Beanstalk, might have some ideas about these ethical questions. After listening to a series of...

For this poetry unit worksheet packet, students complete several activities designed to review key poetry concepts. All worksheets focus on a comparison of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. Students respond to poems, complete short...

Explore a story's character by using this character wheel. Kids will love this graphic organizer. It's easy to use, and there are spaces to write character traits and textual evidence that supports those traits. This is a great middle...

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...

Use this versatile, cross-curricular graphic organizer to demonstrate the power of words in advertising. Scholars analyze print advertisements, identifying parts of the ad that stand out. This could include color, celebrity endorsement,...

Students write a topic sentence to a paragraph and explain that it introduces the main idea. After a whole-class demonstration, students write a complete paragraph with their topic sentence and supporting sentences. There are some...

This nicely-designed presentation does an excellent job of introducing the comma and its many uses. Each of the slides shows different ways in which the comma is used. Learners are given a chance to practice what they have learned in the...

Start kids thinking about point of view and autobiographies by telling them a short story about your morning (first person), and then asking a volunteer to re-tell the story to you (second person). There are tips to help you tie this...

Encourage more pun-derstanding of word play in your literary scholars as they explore Brian P. Cleary's book Rhyme and Punishment: Adventures in Wordplay. Although this isn't suggested, consider beginning this study by simply showing...

What makes a poem difficult? Explore that topic and more with your class as you work through the lesson detailed here. Using materials from Poetry Out Loud, a national recitation contest, individuals or small groups examine poems and...

A class discussion on reference materials opens up a lesson on how to use these important resources. They discover that dictionaries, glossaries, and thesauruses are called word reference resources, and they practice using them. The...

Focus on similarities and differences with a jigsaw activity that requires pupils to compare Waiting for the Biblioburro to other texts they have read. To prepare, class members first respond to text-dependent questions, moving on to...

Organization can take a paragraph from mundane to first-rate. Try out a graphic organizer for an accordion-style paragraph, which includes a topic sentence, three reasons with details and transitions, three explanations, and a concluding...

Support children with finding meaning in unknown words using this graphic organizer. While reading a piece of writing, learners identify unfamiliar words, using context clues and reference materials to find and record definitions before...