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Literature Circle Role Descriptions
In this literature circle role descriptions worksheet, students identify the role they play in the literature circle. The different roles include: summarizer, vocabulary finder, questions writer, story mapper. Each role has three to...
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Ecuadorian Rainforest
Have your class talk about the importance of the rainforest and the products that come from it. Learners watch a video showing the path of chocolate from the rainforest to the supermarket. They discuss how the rainforest and chocolate...
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The Treaty Trail: U.S. - Clothing That Talks: Meaning and Material Culture
Young scholars investigate the cultures of Native Americans and Euro-Americans through their clothing. In this photograph analysis activity, students observe historic photographs and analyze the style of clothes people wore and how it...
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Read and Review
Young scholars create presentations to discuss a book they've read using a video format. In this reading and speech activity, students video tape a presentation about a book they've written a summary for. Young scholars then produce an...
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Classroom Community
Learners read the book The Giving Tree and discuss the sense of community the book talks about. In this community lesson plan, students discuss how they can help one another and they can treat each other nicely.
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Comic Life With Kenzuke's Kingdom
Kenzuke's Kingdom is a wonderful adventure about a boy sailing around the world, it's also the focus of this lesson. Students read the novel as a class then use the Comic Life website to create a two-page comic based on the story. This...
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Let's Get it Together! Reading to Learn
Let’s learn about frogs! Young readers are led through “Freaky Frogs,” a non-fiction article. Teach learners how to edit an article so there are fewer details to sift through. After talking through the article, they learn the six steps...
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What is a Make Believe Story?
Explore the concept of make believe stories. In this genres of literature lesson, students discover the difference between realistic fiction and fantasy. They are asked questions during and after the reading of a book to ensure the...
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Samuel's Choice
The book, Samuel's Choice is used to illustrate the decisions that African Americans who were enslaved during the Revolutionary War had to make. The series of four lessons is designed to be implemented after the book is read. The book,...
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Kites!
Let's go fly a kite! Little learners cut, glue, color, and design kites from a variety of materials. The step-by-step instructions are included along with three wonderful book recommendations. Tip: This project could easily be...
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Express Yourself Lesson Seed 14: Dedication
Connect Martin Luther King Jr's famous speech, "I Have a Dream," to The Cay by Theodore Taylor. Taylor refers to the speech in his dedication, which creates a natural segue into talking about the speech and how it relates to the novel....
Energy for Keeps
The Energy Times
Extra! Extra! Read all about past and present energy use in a classroom-made historical newspaper. Useful as a cross-curricular assignment between science, history, and language arts, the project is sure to get young journalists...
Penguin Books
An Educator’s Guide to Chraisma by Jeanne Ryan
Often, science fiction makes a lot of connections to real life. An educator's guide for the novel Charisma by Jeanne Ryan, has readers discuss many of the real-life issues that come in the text. A brief summary helps garner interest in...
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It's Raining Meatballs
Students participate in activities to determine their macro process and elaborative process abilities. During macro processes readers organize and summarize ideas as they read. They look at the big picture of the entire text as well as...
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A Web of History -- Summarization
Students listen to a reading selection about explorers in Alabama called "Spanish Explorations and Settlements." They listen for main ideas of the reading selection. As a whole group, the students create a word web using the important...
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It's Raining Meatballs
Students observe and demonstrate the process of summarization using the book "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" by Judi Barrett. They silently read the story, and as a class discuss the five W's. Students then write a short summary of...
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Chapter 4 of The Secret School
Fourth graders read chapter 4 of The Secret School and answer discussion questions as they read. In this reading lesson plan, 4th graders also write a summary of what they read.
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The Secret School: chapter 11
Fourth graders read chapter 11 of The Secret School and answer discussion questions as they read. For this reading lesson plan, 4th graders also write a summary of what they read and complete a crossword puzzle..
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Toys and the more distant past
First graders research the history of toys and games. In this toys and games lesson plan, 1st graders read books and look at paintings from the past and discuss the toys and games that were played. Then they paint themselves playing a...
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Summarizing Story Events
Here is a way to build your pupils' public speaking abilities. The lesson describes a reader's report chair, which is used each week by a student who has just finished reading a book. The featured reader sits in the chair and talks about...
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Summarizing Story Events
After reading a book on their own, pupils prepare an oral report on the book, and sit in the "Readers Report Chair" when giving the report to the class. They are taught to briefly summarize the book by talking about one of two favorite...
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Summarizing: James and the Giant Peach
Text marking and a T-chart format to distinguish important information from trivia help elementary readers summarize effectively. Encouraging readers to construct a chapter summary from paragraph-level topic sentences is another sound...
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Creating Summaries
Fourth graders generate written summaries from non-fiction articles. In this writing lesson, 4th graders determine what must be included in writing a good summary and then work in small groups to construct summaries after reading...
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Writing a Letter Using the Book "Mole's Hill"
Students are read the book "Mole Hill" by their teacher. As a class, they identify whether statements are true or false based on the story. They also examine any problems or solutions mentioned and identify points to write a letter. ...