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...

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,...

Here is a wonderful lesson designed for students with special needs. This well-thought-out lesson uses Big Books, familiar stories, and has a lot of review learning built into it. The book, The Keeping Quilt is used in the main part of...

Here is an activity that you can use to help upper elementary or middle schoolers to meet Common Core literacy standards for science and technology. Youngsters read the article on extreme weather patterns, "Weather Runs Hot and Cold, So...

Skateboarding fans will love to read about Gary the gorilla, who loves his red skateboard! As kids read the short passage, they fill in the blanks with words from the word bank at the bottom of the page.

Students participate in 8 guided reading sessions in which they read the novel, Circle of Gold, by Candy Dawson Boyd. They focus on and discuss characterization, synthesis, analysis, and predicting. They complete journal entries and...

Students identify the characteristics of a community. In this Seedfolks literature study lesson, the second in a unit, the teacher finishes reading the class Seedfolks and students answer comprehension questions and examine how...

Young writers choose a person from American history, their community, or their family to use as the subject of a persuasive essay. The process begins with a discussion of the characteristics of a hero, the completion of a prewriting web,...

Students participate in a variety of Guided Reading activities including comprehension questions, discussion, prediction, characterization and inferring meaning while they read Circle of Gold by Candy Dawson Boyd.

Immerse your class in a good story with an extensive resource featuring reader's theater techniques. The worksheets are designed for both teacher and student, and carefully explain how to organize, write, and perform stories in a...

Examine and distinguish between words that have similar definitions but different connotations. Middle schoolers define connotation and denotation and participate in a "shades of meaning" contest in small groups. Groups use the...

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...

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...

Tall tales are so much fun! Introduce your class to Paul Bunyan, Johnny Appleseed, and Davy Crockett, among others! Learn about their lives before reading some of the tall tales as a class. Then, write some tales of your own!

Students use their spelling words for the week to solve analogies. In groups, they work together to place the correct word in the correct place in a sentence. They also read a paragraph and determine the meaning of the word using...

A New York Times article about a 15-year-old style maven who in 2011 launched the fashion magazine "Rookie," based on her blog, makes high-interest nonfiction reading for secondary learners. This page asks 9 comprehension questions...

A pair of complex sentences, drawn from a New York Times article about a police writing class, are punctuated differently with commas and semicolons. There's only one question, but it's a good one to press your grammarians to increase...

Fifth graders compare and contrast an informational article with a fictional story. They read the story "The Contest" as a class, and discuss the different types of literature genres. Next, they complete a vocabulary worksheet and a...

Students explore the initial Supreme Court decision to regulate commercial speech, and then analyze the legal precedents and principles underlying a recent case contesting this regulation.

Learners discuss whether honesty really is the best policy with a lesson on "The Empty Pot," a Chinese fable about integrity. After reading the story, class members answer several comprehension and reflection questions about what...

Young scholars review the meaning and application of primary and secondary sources in research. They determine how researchers locate primary source documents before looking at signatures as a validating factor on many primary sources....

Students participate in a reading lesson that works on social and academic skills. They increase reading comprehension with direct instruction with the group reading of a folktale. Then students research their own stories to tell.

In this feeling words worksheet, students read the words that describe feelings and their definitions. Students then read the descriptions and write the word from the box that tells how each person is feeling.

For this famous person worksheet, students read a passage about Aishwarya Bachchan and then complete a variety of in-class and homework activities to support comprehension, including partner interviews, spelling, cloze, synonym...