ReadWriteThink Notetaker

Useful for a wide variety of reading and writing activities, this outlining tool allows students to organize up to five levels of information.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Interactive

Fairy Tales from Life

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

That's Not Fair! Examining Civil Liberties With the U.S. Supreme Court

Students have the right to have fun in this lesson in which they create a PowerPoint presentation about civil rights and the Supreme Court.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Unit of Study

Modeling Academic Writing Through Scholarly Article Presentations

Students prepare an already published scholarly article for presentation, with an emphasis on identification of the author's thesis and argument structure.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Unit of Study

Building Reading Comprehension Through Think-Alouds

Students learn components of think-alouds and type-of-text interactions through teacher modeling. In the process, students develop the ability to use think-alouds to aid in reading comprehension tasks.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan

Preparing a Character for a New Job: Character Analysis through Job Placement

Working as career counselors for a literary character, students find a job for the character, prepare a resume, and design questions and answers to prepare them for a job interview.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan

Charlotte is Wise, Patient, and Caring: Adjectives and Character Traits

Students find examples of adjectives in a shared reading. Then students "become" major characters in a book and describe themselves and other characters, using powerful adjectives.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan

Blogtopia: Blogging about Your Own Utopia

Students work together to create their own utopias, using blogs as the primary source of publication.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan

Language and Power in The Handmaid's Tale and the World

Students work in small groups to examine Margaret Atwood's use of and observations about language in The Handmaid's Tale. Through this activity, students discover and articulate overarching thematic trends in the book and then can extend their observations about official or political language to examples from their own world.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan

Blending the Past with Today's Technology: Using Prezi to Prepare for Historical Fiction

To prepare for literature circles featuring historical novels, students research the decades of the 1930s to the 1990s and share their information using Prezi, a web application for creating multimedia presentations.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan

Author: ReadWriteThink

Letters and Learning Genre

Using their prior knowledge of books containing letters, students show their understanding of genre by rewriting a story and reflecting on how traditional stories differs from stories told in letters.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan

Comics in the Classroom as an Introduction to Narrative Structure

This lesson uses comic strip frames to define plot and reinforce the structure that underlies a narrative. Students finish by writing their own original narratives.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan

Become a Character: Adjectives, Character Traits, and Perspective

Students "become" one of the major characters in a book and describe themselves and other characters, using lists of accurate, powerful adjectives.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan

Audience & Purpose: Evaluating Disney's Changes to the Hercules Myth

What drives changes to classic myths and fables? In this lesson students evaluate the changes Disney made to the myth of "Hercules" in order to achieve their audience and purpose.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan

Persuading the Principal: Writing Persuasive Letters About School Issues

Students learn that you don't have to raise your voice to raise a point. Writing a persuasive letter to your principal is a great way to get your opinions heard.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan

Exploring Change through Allegory and Poetry

Students read an example of allegory, review literary concepts, complete literary elements maps and plot diagrams, create a pictorial allegory, and write diamante poems related to the theme of change.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan

Critical Media Literacy: Commercial Advertising

By looking at advertising and mass media critically, students begin to understand how the media oppresses certain groups, convinces people to purchase certain products, and influences culture.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan

Poetry Circles: Generative Writing Loops Help Students Craft Verse

Students put their heads together in a poetry circle to learn and practice different forms of poetry.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan

And I Quote: A Punctuation Proofreading Minilesson

Students review the basic conventions for using quotations from literature or references from a research project, focusing on accurate punctuation and page layout, then apply the conventions to their texts.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan

Lights, Camera, Action...Music: Critiquing Films Using Sight and Sound

Movie music and magic set the scene for this lesson in which students analyze a scene from Good Morning, Vietnam and then create a scene of their own.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan