In the essay "Mother Tongue," Amy Tan explains that she "began to write stories using all the Englishes I grew up with." How these "different Englishes" or even a language other than English contribute to identity is a crucial issue for adolescents.

In this lesson, students explore this issue by brainstorming the different languages they use in speaking and writing, and when and where these languages are appropriate. They write in their journals about a time when someone made an assumption about them based on their use of language, and share their writing with the class. Students then read and discuss Amy Tan's essay "Mother Tongue." Finally, they write a literacy narrative describing two different languages they use and when and where they use these languages.

Writing gets personal when students interview family members in order to write a personal narrative about that person.

Students create a Detective's Handbook based on a detective mystery they have read. The handbooks include expository and descriptive writing, as well as a letter.

The activity includes a series of exercises, in which students view the literal representations of idioms and then examine the metaphorical meanings of the idioms.

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.

Picture books provide the basis for an analysis of fairy tale elements before students write their own original tales.

After reading a short memoir and reviewing the genre, students choose how to create a memoir of a family member who is at least a generation older. Students first select a family member to interview, and then craft a set of interview. Students create written memoirs, focusing on one or two unifying themes, and can be presented as a photographic collage, a series of panels telling a story, a painting, a video, a musical composition, a sculpture, or another creative way. Students accompany their work with an artist̍s journal, explaining why they have chosen the particular method of presentation and analyzing their own successes and shortcomings.

Social injustice occurs every day all over the world. In this lesson, students research a few historical examples of social injustice, including the Holocaust, the Trail of Tears, and Japanese internment.

Using various reading strategies and resources, students explore the issue of food waste. They also create persuasive arguments and blog posts examining this topic.

The Flip Book is designed to allow users to type and illustrate tabbed flip books up to ten pages long. Students and teachers can use the flip book for taking notes while reading, making picture books, collecting facts, or creating question and answer booklets.

The Fractured Fairy Tale tool encourages students to create their own fractured fairy tales.

Students gather factual information about frogs and toads to create nonfiction and fiction stories. Drawing is used for prewriting.

Students bring the print-rich environment of the community into the classroom through the use of environmental print, enabling emergent readers to delight in the realization that they are indeed readers.

Students read "The Jolly Postman", in which a postman delivers letters to storybook characters. They explore different types of mail and categorize letters from the book and their own mail. Children find favorite words, phrases, and sentences from familiar stories. Working together, they combine their words and phrases to create a poem. The poem is then shared as performance poetry.

Teachers and students come to school bringing a wide range of backgrounds, languages, abilities, and temperaments. Get things off to the best start by asking them to respect their differences and make the most of their similarities. By sharing information on their lives and dreams, students and teachers can build community in the classroom that will support literacy instruction throughout the school year.

Students build classroom community as they get to know each other and their teacher better by sharing what they like to do outside school.

Students present monologues in the "voice" of someone involved in child labor in England, respond to questions, and then discuss contemporary child laborers and compare them to the past.

Students write and record their own essays for a class blog by first completing a series of activities designed to get them thinking and writing about their experiences.

After researching nutrition and analyzing food advertisements, students work in cooperative groups to create their own advertisements for food products.

Students research, evaluate, and synthesize information about the Harlem Renaissance from varied resources, create an exhibit, and highlight connections across disciplines (i.e., art, music, and poetry) using a Venn diagram.