Direct your class’s attention to the elements that make their community unique. After examining sample travel brochures, groups select something from their community to use as the subject, and then research, create, and publish a...

Go bowling for high-frequency words! Partners take turns drawing bowling ball cards and read the word printed on them. If the learner is successful, they record their score on a scorecard.

Learners read as many high-frequency words as possible in a given amount of time. Peer one reads a word from a list, and peer two points to the corresponding word as they are seen on the table. This activity is timed and peer evaluated.

Using a set of high-frequency word flashcards, partners time each other to see how many words they can read in one minute. They place correctly read words in a yes pile and incorrectly in a no pile. Once a minute is up, partners count...

Taking turns, learners time each other as they read a list of high-frequency words and track progress.

Given a deck of cards with different words printed, pairs draw cards and work together to locate definitions for each multiple-meaning word. Learners complete a worksheet that challenges them to write the word, two of its definitions,...

Your biology class plays the role of epidemiologist when a mysterious illness breaks out in Kildare, USA. Using interviews with doctors, patients, and local citizens, maps, the results from different materials sampling, they work to...

Students compare the perceived and actual risks of getting skin cancer, while looking at ways to minimize these risks. They may have very little grasp of the severity of the threat of skin cancer or be unaware of the increase in the...

Class members create a PowerPoint presentation showing artifacts they would include in a time capsule. The artifacts and explanations reflect personal hobbies, grooming choices, school life, etc. A great way for class members to...

Mathematics aces, after a warm-up activity with some easy calculations, practice solving rules of signs and powers of 10 equations. Multiplying and dividing decimals is also covered within this lesson in depth. A variety of examples and...

Tenth graders, after reading two excerpts about contemporary child labor situations, discuss two broad questions in detail along with the industrial boom following the Civil War conditions in the United States. They investigate how the...

Put children's descriptive writing skills to the test with these fun collaborative writing activities. Presented with the picture of an object, young writers are are tasked with creating a description that provides enough detail for...

There are many different ways to build accuracy and fluency when reading. This exercise employs repetition and timed drills to get the job done. Learners time each other as they read a passage, recording each other's time and accuracy.

Partners practice reading fluency by reciting sentence strips to each other with proper expression and intonation. Partner A chooses a strip at random and reads it silently, then aloud with expression. Partner B reads the same sentence...

Learners time each other as they read as many high-frequency words as possible in one minute. Peers record progress.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" serves as an exemplar for a mini-activity on semicolons. Working alone or in small groups, class members first circle all the semicolons in the letter, and then consider how...

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...

Engage young readers in using context clues with this collaborative vocabulary activity. In pairs, children draw from a deck of cards, with each card asking a question about a context involving a specific vocabulary word. After...

Activate the prior knowledge of young scholars as they expand their vocabulary with this language arts activity. Given a deck of cards containing new vocabulary words, learners sort them into four categories, from Don't know the meaning...

Are you effectively integrating technology into your classroom activities? Based on the SAMR model, here is a rubric that will help you consider important standards by which you can measure your instructional practice, such...

Helen Lester's wonderfully wacky, Tacky and the Winter Games, is the core text featured in a resource packet that includes a prediction exercise, an activity menu, vocabulary flash cards, and book review worksheet. A great way to...

Full of activities for Jan Brett's story "Gingerbread Friends," this resource will get your kids in the mood for some snacks, fortify their need for vocabulary, and fill their minds with story elements.

Second graders identify homophones as words that sound alike but have different meanings. They, given a pair of homophones, are to explain the meanings of the words using gestures, role playing, or drawing a picture with their partner.