Students read "The Jolly Postman", in which a postman delivers letters to storybook characters. They explore different types of mail and categorize letters from the book and their own mail. Children find favorite words, phrases, and sentences from familiar stories. Working together, they combine their words and phrases to create a poem. The poem is then shared as performance poetry.

Teachers and students come to school bringing a wide range of backgrounds, languages, abilities, and temperaments. Get things off to the best start by asking them to respect their differences and make the most of their similarities. By sharing information on their lives and dreams, students and teachers can build community in the classroom that will support literacy instruction throughout the school year.

Students build classroom community as they get to know each other and their teacher better by sharing what they like to do outside school.

Students present monologues in the "voice" of someone involved in child labor in England, respond to questions, and then discuss contemporary child laborers and compare them to the past.

Students write and record their own essays for a class blog by first completing a series of activities designed to get them thinking and writing about their experiences.

The Graphic Map assists teachers and students in reading and writing activities by charting the high and low points related to a particular item or group of items, such as events during a day or chapters in a book.

After researching nutrition and analyzing food advertisements, students work in cooperative groups to create their own advertisements for food products.

Students research, evaluate, and synthesize information about the Harlem Renaissance from varied resources, create an exhibit, and highlight connections across disciplines (i.e., art, music, and poetry) using a Venn diagram.

Students compose a multigenre paper, modeled after the Delany sister's autobiography, "Having Our Say", that includes the autobiographical narrative essay as well as an informational nonfiction piece.

Students will create a beginning resume that represents their current work experience and demonstrates their knowledge of rhetorical situations for professional writing.

Designed to explore the hero and the heroic in literature, this unit asks students to discuss their ideas of heroism and analyze heroes in literature.

Students can use this tool to learn about the elements of the hero's journey, analyze a text that follows the hero's journey pattern, or start creating a hero story of their own.

Students read a work of realistic fiction about bullying and gain understanding through writing, Readers Theatre, and discussion.

Hints about Print demonstrates the process of evaluating a nonfiction print resource to determine its appropriateness for a research project.

Students research the items listed in the song ŕWe Didn't Start the FireĚŇ by Billy Joel, noting their historical relevance, and then document their findings using an online chart.

Let the power of imagination and inference serve as a ńtime machineî to bring Benjamin Franklin into the classroom! History and science come to life in a dialogue with Franklin the inventor, developed through lesson activities that incorporate research, imagination, writing, visual arts, and drama.

Students will identify how Martin Luther King JrŐs dream of nonviolent conflict-resolution is reinterpreted in modern texts. Homework is differentiated to prompt discussion on how nonviolence is portrayed through characterization and conflict. Students will be formally assessed on a thesis essay that addresses the Six Kingian Principles of Nonviolence.

Tell me about it in your own words! If students can paraphrase the information they have read, then youÄand theyÄcan be confident that they understand it.

Students choose a question to explore, research it using a variety of resources, organize their information on a TCF chart, and then collaboratively write a class scientific explanation.

Dr. Seuss's "The Cat in the Hat" is used as a primer to teach students how to analyze a literary work using plot, theme, characterization, and psychoanalytical criticism.