Classroom Resources

Verbals are verbs disguised as nouns, adjectives, and adverbs. Verbals come in three forms: gerunds, infinitives, and participles. Gerunds are verbs that end in "-ing" and function as nouns. Participles end in "-ing," "-ed," "-d," "-t," "-en," "-n" and function as adjectives. Infinitives are the base form plus the word "to" and function as nouns, adjectives, or adverbs. This resource provides instruction and practice in identifying verbals. 

In this online book from the International Children's Digital Library, a young American Indian describes the natural surroundings and activities of the S'Klallam, or Clallam, people through the seasons of the year. The book includes a glossary of S'Klallam words.

Author—Ron Hirschi. Illustrator—Constance R. Bergum.

The four seasons each hold a different but essential role in the lives of the S'Klallam people of the Pacific Northwest. This book highlights the importance of each season and how it affects the ways the S'Klallam people live their lives.

See the supplemental assets for detailed teaching activities. These materials allow students the opportunity to actively engage with the text.

Discover why the crucial factor that can determine whether your next workplace interaction goes well isn’t what you say, but how you listen, in this video from the Career Hacks collection. Host Camille talks with two professionals and learns what not to do in her next interview. She also learns simple things she can do to show respect to anyone she talks with and truly hear what they’re saying. This resource provides instruction and discussion on active listening skills.

In this lesson, students complete two prewriting activities, one on brainstorming ideas using story maps, and one on creating the beginnings of stories. They then work on two collaborative-writing activities in which they draft an "oversized" story on chart paper. Before starting the activities, the teacher reads aloud the first few sentences from a variety of children's books that have unusual, exciting, or particularly descriptive openings. Each student works individually to read what has been written before, adds the "next sentence," and passes the developing story on to another student. The story is passed from student to student until the story is complete. In a later lesson Collaborative Stories 2: Revising, the story is revised by the groups.

In this classroom resource, students will learn the rules for forming the past, present, and future tenses of regular verbs. This resource offers informational material, videos, games, quizzes, and worksheets to help further understand the concept taught in this lesson.

Save the king! In this interactive game, students have to determine the theme (or lesson) in the short story. If the students are correct, they get to place one of the Kid Heroes on the battlefield. Using teamwork will lead to success. This classroom resource also includes a quiz, worksheet, and teaching video to help with understanding.

This quick animation provides a fun and engaging introduction to the narrator's point of view. Students are introduced to the first person and third-person perspectives.

Students use Shakespeare's Secret, a featured title on the Teachers' Choices Booklist (International Reading Association, 2006), as a springboard to the exploration of the controversy regarding the authorship of Shakespeare's works. The novel makes liberal use of the historical details surrounding William Shakespeare's life and exposes students to the possibility raised by some theorists that Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, was the true author of the works that have long been attributed to the Bard. Students explore the historical references in the novel and generate questions for further research. As they research these questions on suggested websites, they organize their findings with the help of the ReadWriteThink Notetaker. Then they work in small groups to create and present short dramatic skits that creatively connect the novel with the historical facts.

Students will analyze art and identify time, place, and mood.  They will sketch a setting from a familiar story.  They will use light, medium, and dark values to create a watercolor wash.  Assessment rubric, letter to parents, examples of artwork, and lesson plan included in PDF.  

The teacher will present an informational text from the website, ReadWorks. The students and teacher can interact with this non-fiction text by annotating the text digitally. The students will answer the questions associated with the article as an assessment. This learning activity can be used to provide students with information about liquid water on Earth, serve as reinforcement after students have already learned this concept, or be used as an assessment at the conclusion of a lesson.

The teacher will present an informational text from the website, ReadWorks. Students will interact with this non-fiction text by annotating the text digitally. This learning activity can introduce students to the concept of chemical weathering or serve as reinforcement after students have already learned this concept. This classroom resource can be paired with the classroom resource "Physical Weathering at Work," so students can compare and contrast these two destructive forces. 

After reading Richard Wright's short novel Rite of Passage, students will demonstrate their understanding of plot, character, and conflict by writing recommendations for the protagonists' future to a juvenile court system judge. Students are guided through the development of these recommendations, including attention to counterarguments based on potential prevailing attitudes in the justice system at the time.

There are many back to school activities that take place to help create a classroom community. It is important for students to feel that they own the space and the learning that takes place in their classroom. Foster such ownership for students by collaboratively writing an owner's manual that describes the classroom's areas and procedures. Students begin by sharing thoughts and feelings about school so far and brainstorming a list of important classroom places, routines, and events. Next, they select an item from the brainstormed list and write a draft description of how their topic “works” in the classroom and after peer-review, make appropriate revisions. Then students use interactive tools to create their piece of the classroom owner's manual. Finally, students share their work and decide as a class how to share the information with others, such as an Open House or when new students join the classroom.

Students take turns taking home a book bag that includes a stuffed toy, a book to read with their families, art supplies, a topic to discuss, and a journal to complete as a family. The students then return the bag the following day and share their entries with the class. After every student has taken the bag home, the journal is bound into a book for the classroom library. The teacher then selects a new topic and book to start a second rotation. The goal is to invite parents to join their children in these literacy activities.

This classroom resource includes engaging activities to teach basic grammar concepts while developing vocabulary and spelling proficiency. A list of several amusing and informative grammar-themed picture books supply read-aloud examples for a review of nouns and adjectives and an introduction to gerunds. Students themselves refer to the books from the list of materials, plus appropriate dictionaries and glossaries, as they engage in a word-sort activity that provides practice in the spelling changes that can occur when verbs are turned into gerunds. Diamante poems are introduced through handouts and websites, and students compose original, structured poems in this form—first as a class and then independently—using an online interactive tool.  Printable handouts and links are included.

The Story of the Three Little Pigs is a classic folktale presented digitally in the Children’s Digital Library Foundation’s database of children’s literature. Students may access this book, along with other folktales and pieces of literature, to identify the central theme, message, or moral of the story and explain the meaning conveyed in the text.

2018 Arkansas Teacher of the Year, Randi House, shows students how to look for clues in a text to support answers and gives students several examples of sentence starters they can use to introduce evidence from the text. Ms. House tells students a short story about Milly Hilly and then asks questions that require students to make inferences that must be supported by story details. The accompanying activity gives students an opportunity to practice making and supporting inferences with the short story “The Fisherman and His Wife.”

In this interactive lesson, discover how literary techniques like setting, characterization, and conflict contribute to the overarching theme of a text. Through analysis of Lorraine Hansberry's iconic play A Raisin in the Sun, explore the importance of these different elements individually, then learn how each piece comes together to establish a theme.

In this lesson, students explore the power of narrative voice in storytelling and in particular the first-person point of view. They engage with the text through a shared reading exercise and view a video segment from The Great American Read. Finally, students analyze text to identify how authors use language and voice to channel the emotions and experiences of characters.

Helping verbs are a special category of verbs. They do not mean anything on their own. They just "help" the main verbs to express their full meanings, and are necessary for the grammatical structure of a sentence. In this classroom resource, students will learn about helping verbs. This resource offers informational material, videos, games, quizzes, and worksheets to help further understand this concept.

Understanding how to support a point is important both in reading and writing. In Slime Lab, you're in control of a crazy scientist with a slime gun. His laboratory is overrun by robots and other traps. Try and find all 3 supporting details for the main idea through 10 levels of sci-fi adventure.

Alphabats - Alliteration is a super fun way for kids to practice phonemic awareness. Click on the bats’ bellies to hear the words, then match the words with the same beginning sounds. Match 6 words correctly, then help the bats collect fireflies!

In this lesson, students will identify how animals and elements of nature are represented by dancers. They will read poetry by Indigenous and Native Peoples of North America.  Using basic locomotor movement, students will choreograph and perform a dance from a poem.    

Students will analyze Sebastiano Ricci's Perseus Confronting Phineus with the Head of Medusa.  They will discuss the story elements found in the painting, such as setting, characters, and actions.  Students will be given a print of a painting and write a narrative based on the characters and setting.  Based on their narrative, students will illustrate what happened before and after the given painting.    

The teacher will present an informational text from the website, ReadWorks. The students and teacher can interact with this non-fiction text by annotating the text digitally. The students will answer the questions associated with the article as an assessment. This learning activity can be used to explain that fossils can provide evidence about past environments and organisms. 

The teacher will present an informational text from the website, ReadWorks. The students and teacher can interact with this non-fiction text by annotating the text digitally. The students will answer the questions associated with the article as an assessment. This learning activity can be used as an introduction to transparent, translucent, opaque, and reflective materials, serve as reinforcement after students have already learned these concepts, or be used as an assessment at the conclusion of a lesson. This informational text could provide background knowledge before students investigate materials that are transparent, translucent, opaque, or reflective. 

This lesson is not about markers over pencils; it is about developing a relationship between students and media and how such nurtured connections can support students' ideas in what they write and how they write it. Through in-class discussions about writing/drawing materials and carefully observing how an illustrator uses media to communicate ideas, students will see how materials can extend knowledge. This lesson provides opportunities for students to explore and experience the meaning potential of everyday writing and drawing tools in their own writing. The lesson can (and should be) adapted for older students.

Students read, analyze, and discuss medieval English ballads and then list characteristics of the genre. They then emphasize the narrative characteristics of ballads by choosing a ballad to act out. Using the Venn diagram tool, students next compare medieval ballads with modern ones. After familiarizing themselves with ballad themes and forms, students write their own original ballads, which they will perform in small groups. Finally, students engage in self-reflection on their group performances and on the literary characteristics of their ballads.

Francis Cugat's 1925 cover art for The Great Gatsby and The View of Toledo by El Greco, mentioned in the final pages of the novel, are the focus of pre-reading and post-reading activities in this lesson plan. Before reading the novel, students tap visual literacy skills as they analyze the artwork commissioned for the novel's cover. Based on their analysis, students make predictions about the plot and imagery of the novel. After completing their reading, students revisit the visual imagery and artwork and discuss how their interpretations have changed. Next, students explore allusion by analyzing an El Greco painting alluded to in the novel and discussing what the allusion means. Finally, students conclude their study by selecting images and designing their own cover for the novel.

These lessons challenge students to write original stories using alphabetical order. For students who are still developing a basic understanding of alphabetization, the entire class can write one story, beginning each page with a new letter. Challenge more advanced students to write their own stories or to compose the words in each sentence in alphabetical order. Students can illustrate their texts in class or at home with their families. Although this lesson was primarily written for a first- or second-grade class, modifications can be made to allow kindergarten students to have success with alphabetizing as well.

In this learning activity, students will gather information about personal experiences of survivors of Japanese-American internment camps during World War II. Students communicate the information they learn by creating their own comic to retell the story of the survivors. Resource links to videos, journals, articles, comic book template and artwork are included in the material. 

Students will listen to the story Ballet of the Elephants by Leda Shubert and the music Circus Polka: For a Young Elephant by Igor Stravinsky. They will analyze rhythm patterns, create choreography for animal movements, and choose an instrument to accompany them. They will write a paragraph to describe the animal and its movements. They will perform their animal ballet for the class.  

In this interactive lesson, students will learn that life without friction is a 3-ring circus and an accident waiting to happen. A circus dog with lots of tricks will help you learn about compare and contrast, cause and effect, and the importance of friction.

The teacher will present an informational text from the website, ReadWorks. The students and teacher can interact with this non-fiction text by annotating the text digitally. The students will answer the questions associated with the article as an assessment. This learning activity can be used to introduce students to the physical properties of different materials, serve as reinforcement after students have already learned this concept, or be used as an assessment at the conclusion of a lesson. This learning activity will provide important background information before students collecting and evaluating their own data regarding physical properties of matter. 

Expository texts are a key component of literacy but often do not get introduced to students until the later grades. This lesson helps third- through fifth-grade students explore the nature and structure of expository texts that focus on cause and effect. Students begin by activating prior knowledge about cause and effect; the teacher then models discovering these relationships in a text and recording in a graphic organizer what the relationships that the class finds. Students work in small groups to apply what they learned using related books and then write paragraphs outlining the cause-and-effect relationships they have found.