Curated OER
Book Title: One is a Snail, Ten is a Crab
Students read a story and write math problems. In this reading and math comprehension lesson, students preview and read the book "One is a Snail, Ten is a Crab". Students predict ways to get a sum of 11, write math equations and draw...
Curated OER
Are You My Mother Game
Invite your kindergarteners to explore sound and hearing. Using film canisters, or containers, filled with items from the story "Are You My Mother?" they will predict what the objects were from the story. Tip: you could create a learning...
Curated OER
Lyddie
Students investigate the character trait of perseverance and how it is used to help a girl gain independence in a fictional story. The story also has them think about the value of relationships and then write reflectively about...
Curated OER
Bronze Bow
Explore ancient Rome through reading The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth George Speare. Readers activate prior knowledge by examining objects that relate to the story and predict the significance of the items. Their curiosity is aroused through...
Curated OER
Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf
Students discuss the differences between a storybook and an information book. Students use various materials found in nature to make a nature collage. Students make a nature dictionary using pictures and their own definitions from the...
Curated OER
Octopus Lesson Plan
Children explore the life of an octopus. They listen to a story, answer prediction questions and share their prior knowledge of animals. Young scholars observe the defense mechanism of the octopus. They create an imaginary defense...
Curated OER
My Family
Young scholars read a story entitled, "My Family." They predict what they expect to they family will be doing in the book. Students explore strategies for decoding unfamiliar words. They brainstorm things family members might teach each...
Curated OER
The Furry News: How to Make a Newspaper
Students investigate the process of making a newspaper using children's literature to create context for the lesson. The readers are asked to predict the events of the story as it is read to them. Then the teacher uses guided questions...
Curated OER
Hatchet
Students write about a time when they were in a situation where nature frightened them. They write about how Brian solved the problem of how to start a fire in the story. Students complete a short research paper on one of the plants or...
Curated OER
The Outside Dog
Pupils observe the book, "The Outside Dog," and predict the events of the story. At the conclusion of the story, students act out various paragraphs from the book and write about specified characters. Additional cross-curriculum...
EMC
The Inn of Lost Time Reader's Resource
Introduce "The Inn of Lost Time" by Lensey Namioka to your middle schoolers with a reader's resource page. It includes links to different activities, including a creative writing prompt about losing fifty years of your life, and a...
Curated OER
The Gummywolf
Students read a story about "Gummywolf," stopping periodically to answer questions about the progression of the story. Next, they create a Venn Diagram to compare and contrast "Gummywolf" to "Goldilocks and the Three Bears." Students...
Curated OER
The Polar Express
Learners read the story, "The Polar Express." Prior to beginning the story, students predict events of the story and drink hot cocoa. Afterwards, they write a short story about Christmas and create a model train for the classroom....
Curated OER
Mouse Painting (Color Mixing)
After reading the story Mouse Paint by Ellen Stoll Walsh, little ones make a mouse painting of their own. They discuss mixing colors, painting, and the story, then they "dance" with their fingers through puddles of paint.
Curated OER
The Island of the Skog
"Students read "The Island of the Skog." Prior to reading, students observe the book cover, predict the events of the story, and discuss what a skog may look like. Students make footprints in play dough and observe the differences...
Curated OER
A Walk Around the School: Mapping Places Near and Far
After reading Pat Hutchins’ Rosie’s Walk, have your young cartographers create a map of Rosie’s walk. Then lead them on a walk around the school. When you return class members sequence the walk by making a list of how the class got from...
Curated OER
The Miracle of the First Poinsettia
Connecting to literature and learning how to infer are two great reading strategies everyone needs to know. Here, the class will read along with the story The Miracle of the First Poinsettia, review folktales as a genre, and make...
Curated OER
Making and Using a Graphic Organizer for Solving a Mystery
Students create tables in a word processing program which helps them organize their text clues when reading a mystery story. They develop reading comprehension strategies while using a computer based graphic organizer in order to solve...
Harper Collins
If You Give...Series Teaching Guide
If you give teachers a few good ideas, they can really bring a story to life. Included in this resource are dozens of activities to use as your class reads books in the If You Give... series. From holding puppet shows and creating comic...
Curated OER
Chinese New Year
Students complete a variety of activities as they study Chinese New Year and the Chinese Zodiac. They act out a story of the Chinese Zodiac. They make several crafts including Chinese lanterns and paper fortune cookies.
Curated OER
Coming To America
Students investigate the history of America with the help of children's literature. The story is structured as a timeline that begins at the time of Columbus and progresses to the present. The teacher reads the story with the class and...
Curated OER
The Tell-Tale Heart
Bring Edgar Allan Poe's spooky story to life! After reading the short story "The Tell-Tale Heart," middle and high schoolers identify the theme, character traits, irony, and other story concepts. During pre-reading, they take notes,...
Freeology
Strategies for Reading Posters
Clarify, connect, evaluate, predict, question. Laminate and display these colorful posers about the classroom to remind readers of the five basic strategies for comprehending all sorts of text.
Curated OER
Encountering Very Different Ways of Life
Students explore the concept of crossing cultures through reading the stories "Help! My Father is Coming!" and "The Visit to Vijay's." In this culture lesson, students predict what will happen next in the stories. Students discuss the...