Students learn about personification by reading and discussing poems and then brainstorm nouns and verbs to create personification in their own poems.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Students thoroughly explore identifying synonyms and adjectives before using them to add variety and interest to their own writing.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Student pairs aim to be the first team to call out "bingo" in this lesson in which they use skimming and scanning to locate information about ancient Greece and Rome.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Using the guiding question, "What is reading?" students interact with a variety of texts as they uncover the skills necessary to interact with texts and develop a definition of reading.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Students compare the traits fact and fiction by using a Venn diagram to compare fiction and nonfiction books about Native Americans.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan, Unit of Study
Boom! Br-r-ring! Cluck! Moo!: Everywhere you turn, you find exciting sounds. Students use these sounds to write their own poems based on Dr. Seuss's "Mr. Brown Can MOO! Can You?"
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Students build their understanding of the terms "compare" and "contrast" by participating in class discussions, using Internet resources, working collaboratively, and by visually representing information in a Venn diagram.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Fact Fragment Frenzy provides elementary students with an online model for finding facts in nonfiction text, then invites students to find facts in five sample passages.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Interactive
Picture books provide the basis for an analysis of fairy tale elements before students write their own original tales.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan, Unit of Study
Students gather factual information about frogs and toads to create nonfiction and fiction stories. Drawing is used for prewriting.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan, Unit of Study
Students will really get into character when they read short stories and analyze the hows and whys of character behaviors.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Like Junie B. Jones, students will be saying "Wait till you hear this" after listening to a Junie B. story and creating mystery boxes to help retell the story.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Unit of Study
Students will listen to a familiar story with repetitive lines that the children can remember. They will make puppets and retell the story in small groups with an adult volunteer or an older child. Main Curriculum Tie: English Language Arts Kindergarten Reading: Literature Standard 2, With prompting and support, retell familiar stories, including key details. All children will participate in retelling a familiar story using puppets. This will help develop oral language and comprehension.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan, Unit of Study
Children write and receive postcards from friends and family, and then chart where all those postcards come from on a classroom map.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Students work on a guided characterization project, using a graphic map to illustrate the ways a character from a book series grows and evolves over the course of the story.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Students read and analyze fairy tales, identifying their common elements. They then write their own "fractured" fairy tales by changing one of the literary elements found in the original.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Students write an owner's manual that helps them get to know their classroom, provides them with a sense of ownership, and lets others know about their classroom.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Let the students be the vocabulary experts! Prior to whole class instruction, students create online flashcards and teach the class the new vocabulary.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Students use trading cards to examine fictional characters in a story.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Students will research a local issue, and then write letters to two different audiences, asking readers to take a related action or adopt a specific position on the issue.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
