Explore the hidden meanings behind the images on US currency with this elementary school lesson on symbolism. Starting with a class discussion about symbols, children go on to brainstorm different objects that represent the Unites...

A series of food-related sentences and words are the focus of this practical and straight-forward instructional activity. With a 70 minute video lecture and ASL demo, this resource features images and clips of very useful ASL vocabulary...

Some smells are better than others! Explore your sense of smell with a series of activities based on the Peruvian folktale, The Stolen Smell. With exercises about phonics, counting, cooking, art, and drama, the lesson is a...

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...

Determining which statements represent fact or the author's opinion in an integral part of reading informational text. Encourage seventh graders to read a passage about Barack Obama and the city of Chicago, as well as a passage focused...

Learners compile information to include in their career portfolio. In this portfolio lesson, students view example portfolios using the given website and identify the portfolio components. Learners gather and compile artifacts for their...

“What do you mean that my language is improper?” Prior to My Fair Lady was Pygmalion. Fair Eliza’s struggles with English, which according to George Bernard Shaw “is not accessible even to Englishmen,” come alive in the 1938 film version...

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...

In pairs, learners describe and use guide words to locate words in a dictionary. This is a timed activity, where points can be earned by completing the goal first. Tip: Have kids look up weird words in the dictionary, and then come up...

What can a quarter possibly teach young learners about desert ecosystems? More than you might think. After displaying and discussing the included picture of the Arizona state quarter, the class participates in a series of...

Show your class how to read a map and decipher all of the markings and features. Start out by connecting maps to their homework from the night before and their current reading, in this case That Book Woman, and a related informational...

Really? Rapping The Odyssey? Really. A discussion of the oral tradition of story telling and its links to Epic poetry sets the stage for a series of activities that encourage improvisation to integrate music into other classrooms....

¿Cómo estás? ¿Estás feliz? ¿Tiene calor? Beginning Spanish speakers practice expressing their physical feelings, state of mind, and confusion with a helpful vocabulary exercise.

As a review of persuasive techniques, groups develop a one-sentence slogan designed to entice others to purchase a produce or adopt a point of view. The group then craft a storyboard for a commercial for their product.

Practice makes perfect when it comes to learning grammar with this ESL resource. Offering a great way to teach about relative clauses, this lesson plan engages students with a series of partner, small group, and whole class speaking...

In preparation for the unit exam, groups employ the strategies they have been practicing to formulate an interpretative claim about the connections between Christopher Paul Curtis's " Bud, Not Buddy, and Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford...

The first lesson plan in a unit that uses Christopher Paul Curtis' award-winning depression-era novel, Bud, Not Buddy, as the anchor text establishes the routines that will be used throughout the unit.

Fact and opinion passages inform readers about the seasons on the prairie and Zambia in Southern Africa. Then, test scholar's knowledge with multiple choice and short answer questions.     

A short video demonstrates the importance of non-verbal communication in the forming of first impressions. Viewers observe the facial expressions, tone of voice, body language, and appearance of job seekers in an interview, then discuss...

Animals oftentimes elicit various characteristics which make them symbolic or representative of human feeling, action, or emotion. The class creates horse characters out of clay to show character action and symbolism. This is a great...

Read and analyze a variety of Shakespearean and contemporary puns using Visual Thesaurus computer software. Middle and high schoolers analyze a pun as a class; in small groups they analyze a Shakespearean pun using contextual clues and...

Dander from the show Twisted Whiskers and characters from My Little Pony are featured in this three part lesson that explores using story pyramids to scaffold ideas, adding sensory details to enrich writing, and editing using common...

Riddle me this! What do kennings, caesura, and alliteration have to do with the Nowell Codex? Introduce class members to Anglo-Saxon poetry and prepare readers for a study of Beowulf with a series of activities that...

Expose your class to Waiting for the Biblioburro, narrative nonfiction that will act as the bridge between ficiton and informational texts to come. Class members do a close reading of the text, looking at excerpts instead of the whole...