Go Away, Big Green Monster!‰ŰÓEd Emberley‰ŰŞs tale about a scary, multicolored monster‰ŰÓis used to help students build their reading fluency and word recognition skills. In this lesson, students chorally read the story and then point out familiar color words or sight words that appear in the story. After finishing the story, students are introduced to four different literacy center activities that include participating in a read along, building word families with story words, playing a memory game with color words from the story, and retelling story events using sentence strips. In the sessions that follow, students create their own artwork of the big green monster and use that artwork to help them write a story. Students use both self- and peer-editing to improve their writing. Completed stories are either published on the Internet or in a class book.

The game Bingo is transformed in this lesson in which students use symbols and images to make connections to environmental print through the use of personalized Bingo cards.

Bio Cube is a useful summarizing tool that helps students identify and list key elements about a person for a biography or autobiography.

In this lesson students explore a number of sources to create a biographical timeline about a selected person. Students collaboratively research and resolve conflicting information they find during their investigation.

Students read biographies and explore websites of selected American authors and then role-play as the authors.

Students use a text set to increase understanding of content area material and demonstrate what they have learned by writing an original piece that blends together narrative and expository elements.

To prepare for literature circles featuring historical novels, students research the decades of the 1930s to the 1990s and share their information using Prezi, a web application for creating multimedia presentations.

Make the most of your students' diverse ability levels and experience with a prewriting activity in which they describe an abstract idea using blogging and photographs that they have taken.

Students work together to create their own utopias, using blogs as the primary source of publication.

Students create a personalized biography for their reading buddy, and each child is the author, illustrator, and editor.

This lesson describes how small groups of students can plan meetings to discuss what they've read in a "just for fun" book club they've organized - and that they control.

Explore the parts of book covers and dust jackets with this online guide, designed to to allow users to review the content that appears on each portion of these artifacts.

Students write a persuasive letter to the editor of a newspaper from a selected fictional character's perspective, focusing on a specific issue or situation explored in the novel.

Students respond to a book they have read by thinking symbolically to create a business card for one of the characters.

In this alternative to the traditional book report, students respond to a play they have read by creating a resume for one of its characters.

Students must think critically to create comic strips highlighting six important scenes from a book they have read.

In this alternative to the traditional book report, students create book trailers using Microsoft Photo Story 3, a free downloadable software program for digital storytelling.

Students explore familiar literary characters, usually first encountered as adults, but whose childhood stories are only told later. Students then create childhoods for adult characters from books of their choice.

Students explore book covers of a variety of books then create a new cover for a book they have read.

Comic frames are traditionally used to illustrate a story in a short, concise format. In this lesson, students use a six-paneled comic strip frame to create a story map, summarizing a book or story that they've read. Each panel retells a particular detail or explains a literary element (such as setting or character) from the story.