Students read and analyze technology reviews to establish the characteristics of the genre. They then compose their own reviews on a technology of their choice.
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 make predictions about "Bridge to Terabithia" and its characters, complete character studies, and relate the characters' experiences to their own as they identify ways to make and keep friends.
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 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
In this alternative to the traditional book report, students report on their novel choices using Facebook-like pages.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Students demonstrate their knowledge of cause-and-effect relationships by creating original comic strips and sharing their completed work in an oral presentation format.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Strategic reading allows students to monitor their own thinking and make connections between texts and their own experiences. Students who make connections while reading are better able to understand the text they are reading. It is important for students to draw on their prior knowledge and experiences to connect with the text. Students are thinking when they are connecting, which makes them more engaged in the reading experience. Students gain a deeper understanding of a text when they make authentic connections. However, teachers need to know how to show students how a text connects to their lives, another text they have read, or the world around them. In this strategy guide, you will learn how to model text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections for your students so that they may begin to make personal connections to a text on their own.
Material Type: Reading, Teaching/Learning Strategy
Students examine leads in existing texts and create alternative leads for them before revising leads in their own writing.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Students hone their teamwork skills and play off each other's writing strengths as they participate in prewriting activities for a story to be written collaboratively by the whole class.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
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.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Interactive
Students learn about alliteration, and then practice using alliteration in acrostic poems, tongue twisters, alphabet books, and number books.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Using "The Grapes of Wrath" as a backdrop, students conduct research on issues that the novel addresses, publishing their findings in a multigenre museum exhibit.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan, Unit of Study
Students build upon their knowledge of biographies to write their own autobiographical incident. After going through a process of revision, they use a rubric to assess their work.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Unit of Study
Students explore and analyze the techniques that political (or editorial) cartoonists use and draw conclusions about why the cartoonists choose those techniques to communicate their messages.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
The importance of reading aloud to children is an established tenet of reading instruction. This lesson supports the language development and reading comprehension of kindergarten through second graders. Through the use of the text talk strategy, students explain, develop, and expand story ideas. This lesson is designed to help students learn how to gain meaning from words that are taken out of their original context.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
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.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan, Unit of Study
Students analyze the concepts of identity, stereotyping, and discrimination by reading picture books; identify how these concepts are dealt with in each book; and discuss concrete actions to stop discrimination.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Unit of Study
After exploring several question and answer books on a variety of topics, students research a topic and create their own class question and answer book.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Unit of Study
Students learn about organic gardening by developing their own research questions, conducting research, gardening at their school, creating signs about their plants, and presenting their research to the class.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Unit of Study
