Jackson Public Schools
Summer Reading Activities
Provide parents with the tools they need to bridge the summer learning gap with this collection of fun activities. Whether it's creating an alphabet poster with illustrations for each letter, playing a game of sight word concentration,...
Lerner Publishing
Meet the Dinosaurs
Take your class of youngsters on a prehistoric adventure with this four-lesson series on dinosaurs. Accompanying the Meet the Dinosaurs books by Don Lessem, these lessons engage children in writing their own dinosaur books,...
Pickle Bums
Catch a Bug Game
Young mathematicians bottle up colorful bugs as they learn to sort and count objects. With six different colored jars and six different colored bugs, children must place the creepy crawlers in their respective containers and see how many...
University of Texas
Alphabetic Understanding, Phonics, and Spelling
Have your youngsters reading in no time with with collection of literacy activities and lessons. Starting with a basic understanding of the alphabet, this unit progressively builds students' phonemic awareness and ability to decode...
Math Solutions
Shape Sorting: Looking for Green!
Young mathematicians rotate, flip, and sort their way to an understanding of the different attributes of geometric figures. Using transparent yellow and blue shapes, children try to match congruent figures together...
Education Outside
Seed Sort
"One of these things is not like the other. . ." After listening to a story about seeds and discussing the role of seeds, kindergartners sort five different seeds by size, shape, and color.
Florida Center for Reading Research
Comprehension: Text Analysis, Compare and Contrast
Grab any two topics, some index cards, and a couple of kids, and you're ready to compare and contrast! The resource provides instructions for this method and three graphic organizers in addition to or in place of the index cards.
Discovery Education
Clutter Cutter
Challenge young learners to cut the clutter with this fun engineering project. As employees of a home and office supply company, young engineers are asked to develop devices that organize everyday items. After participating in a...
Illustrative Mathematics
Sort and Count II
Capture the engagement of young mathematicians with this hands-on sorting activity. Given a bag of objects, learners work independently sorting the items based on their physical attributes, counting to determine the size of each group....
Illustrative Mathematics
Sort and Count
Young mathematicians are on their feet and moving around in this primary grade sorting activity. After giving each child an object or picture card, they then sort themselves into groups, counting to see which has the most or least...
US Department of Agriculture
Agriculture Counts
Agricultural survey and the documentation of livestock or goods was the basis for the first written language. Youngsters discuss sorting and counting, and how these skills have been used for thousands of years. They accent their class...
EngageNY
Close Reading of Excerpts from My Librarian Is a Camel: How Do People Access Books Around the World?
Acquaint your class with informational text through a close reading. First, examine a couple of pages together, looking at text features and content. The whole class focuses on marking down a brief summary of each paragraph before...
EngageNY
Close Reading of The Boy Who Loved Words: How Do People Build Their Word Power?
Third graders practice the skills of identifying the main message in a story, describing the main character, and sorting the key details of a story into specific categories. The story they read is, The Boy Who Loved Words. Using a...
EngageNY
End of Unit 1 Assessment: Close Reading and Powerful Note-Taking on My Own
As the final lesson plan in a larger beginning-of-the-year unit to establish routines and teach close reading skills, this plan is designed as an assessment piece. Using the story, The Librarian of Basra, learners independently...
EngageNY
Close Reading of Nasreen's Secret School: How Do People Access Books in Afghanistan?
Third graders continue to practice the close reading skills of capturing the gist and reading again for important details in the sixth lesson in a larger unit. This is a great beginning-of-the-year unit for establishing visible thinking...
Curated OER
Moth or Butterfly
Young scholars categorize butterflies and moths by identifying the unique characteristics of the two different species. In this classifying lesson, students discuss their prior knowledge about these insects before...
Curated OER
Adapting "List/Group/Label" to Literature
Need a prereading activity in line with the Common Core Standards for Language? Although designed for grades 11 and 12, the procedure detailed in this resource could be used with most grade levels. Prior to reading, select 20 – 25 words...
Curated OER
Categorizing Objects
Kindergartners practice the important skill of placing things in their correct categories. They must discern between items of clothing and items of food. The use of the Inspiration 7 educational software is effectively used in this...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonological Awareness: Rhyme, Rhyme Closed Sort
A rhyming activity challenges scholars to sort picture cards according to their rhyme. Four picture cards line up across the top of a pocket chart. Learners take turns choosing from a face-down stack of picture cards and sort them...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Phonics, Letter-Sound Correspondence: Letter Bag
An activity focuses on final sounds sorting. Scholars pull objects out of a bag, identify what letter sound the object ends with, then draw the picture under the appropriate column.
Curated OER
Organizing Research
Before sending your third graders to the library, help them build a solid foundation for their research with this plan. Following the "I do, we do, you do" method, the teacher starts by modeling how to create a research question and...
Curated OER
Count the Images!
Based on a selection of images, learners create a bar graph depicting how many of each image is shown. There are two graphs, each with three images to chart. After they are finished, scholars can analyze the data and draw conclusions. To...
Curated OER
Fruits and Vegetables
Here is a fun way to investigate fruits and vegetables. In this healthy diet and reading lesson, learners read and recite several poems about fruits and vegetables. They sort pictures and word cards with assorted names of fruits and...
Curated OER
Categorizing Matter
Six envelopes with different substances in each prompt students to group, categorize and identify. They are given the properties of each substance including the density and students sort the six substances into at least three...