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The Northern Arapaho of the Wind River Indian Reservation are storytellers. In an effort to pass their culture to the next generation, the elders tell the children four traditional stories. Using clay animation, shadow puppets, painting, drawing, and performance, the children make the stories come to life.

LESSON OBJECTIVES:

Students will investigate how traditional teaching and the passing on of knowledge and wisdom are done through storytelling.

This is a reading guide/lesson plan with step-by-step instructions to accompany the book Feivel's Flying Horses by Heidi Smith Hyde and illustrated by Johanna Van Der Sterre. Feivel's Flying Horses tells the story of a Jewish woodcarver who moved from the Old Country and carved carousel horses to earn money to bring his family from Europe to America. The story is a historical fiction story of immigrants coming to America. The reading guide is recommended for kindergarten through 4th grade.  

In this lesson, students identify how the rapper, Common, and writer, Walter Dean Myers, reinterprets Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream of nonviolence in their own works. This lesson also aims to expose high school students to nonviolent options of conflict-resolution. To activate prior knowledge, students will watch Martin Luther King Jr.'s “I Have a Dream” speech and read Doreen Rappaport's picture book, Martin's Big Words, and recall how he approached conflict. The students will connect Dr. King's answer to conflict-resolution with Common's interpretation of nonviolence, as demonstrated in his song, “A Dream”. The students will also connect this dream of nonviolence to Walter Dean Myers' short story, “Monkeyman,” from the book 145th Street. Students are assigned a particular homework task prior to reading the short story in order to encourage a text-based discussion on characterization and conflict. The students will be introduced to Dr. King's Six Principles of Nonviolence and compose a thesis essay as a final assessment.

ABC Slider Puzzle is a new twist on putting the letters of the alphabet in alphabetical order! Start with "A" in the top left corner, then slide the letter blocks up, down, left, or right to put them in alphabetical order. This game is fun for all ages: young learners will have fun practicing their ABCs, and older kids will have a blast solving the puzzle!

In this resource, students connect new information to personal experiences which helps learners comprehend and clarify their responses to literature. Learners can apply and accommodate vocabulary and meanings they already understand to new situations and concepts. Students make connections between a video about bees and their own personal experiences through a poem written for two voices.
Students share personal experiences they have had with bees. They then watch a video clip about handling bee hives and wearing a beard of bees. They respond to the video by connecting their response to personal experiences through a poem for two voices.

Writing poetry enables students to reflect on their everyday experiences, express their perceptions and observations, and craft powerful images. In this lesson, students write theme poems using their content knowledge and sensory awareness of a familiar object. Students first learn about the characteristics and format of a theme poem. They then engage in an online interactive activity in which they select a graphic of a familiar object (e.g., the sun, a heart, a balloon), build a word bank of the content area and sensory words related to the object, and write poems within the shape of the object. Finished poems are printed and displayed in class.

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 sound waves, serve as reinforcement after students have already learned this concept, or be used as an assessment at the conclusion of a lesson. This article will describe an experiment that can be performed for students to view the motion of sound waves. 

Rhyme & Climb is a game that focuses on rhyming words. Students listen for a word that rhymes with the word from their list. If it rhymes, they select the thumbs up. If not, the thumbs down.

Intensive pronouns add needed emphasis to a sentence. While they function similarly to reflexive pronouns, they differ in that the pronoun can be removed without altering the meaning of the sentence. This resource includes a short video, a handout, and a practice sheet. 

This classroom resource is an engaging lesson plan from ReadWriteThink that allows students to explore how writers use sensory imagery as a literary device to make the text more meaningful for the reader.  The lesson begins with the students using all of their senses to describe known objects such as pasta, chocolate, or grapes. Students first feel and listen to the object, in a bag, before taking it out of the bag to look at, smell, and taste it. They then use at least three senses to write a poem about the object they've described.  Next, they evaluate how this literary device functions in Pat Mora's poem “Echoes.” As students read this poem, they look for sensory images and write an explanation of how these images contribute to the meaning of Mora's poem. Finally, students think about how sensory images work in their own poems and then make appropriate revisions to their work.  The resource includes links to student interactives and printable handouts.

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 changes caused by heating or cooling water, serve as reinforcement after students have already learned this concept, or be used as an assessment at the conclusion of a lesson. This article will provide evidence to students that the physical changes caused by heating and cooling water can be reversed. 

An author’s tone is the attitude the author has about a subject or toward the reader. The tone is typically conveyed through the words and phrases that the author uses. In this classroom resource, the students will look at three general types of tone: positive, negative, and neutral. This classroom resource is an instructional video, and there is a worksheet and a quiz to support understanding.

Discover how authors use figurative language to enhance their writing and explore the differences between similes and metaphors in this animated video from WNET. Discussion questions below help students to further apply their understanding before analyzing a text.

This unit provides three types of reports that can be written and shared by kindergarten students. These reports allow young students to see themselves as writers with important information to share with others. In the first report, students report what they've learned about an apple using all five senses by completing a simple report form. In the second activity, they explore a variety of nonfiction media about animals of their choice. After they write journal pages recording simple information about the animals, completed pages are stapled together, and students create clay representations of their selected animals. In the final report, students use facts they have researched to create and share original riddles about selected animals.

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 will introduce students to ways animals can pollinate plants. This could be used as a precursor before students design and create their own models.

In this classroom resource, students will learn the parts of a predicate. A predicate is what is being said about the subject in a sentence. In other words, it describes what is happening. This resource offers videos, games, and worksheets to help further understand the concept taught in this lesson.

Students will be watching a video segment about Timbuktu, which was once a thriving center of Islamic learning. They will learn about the efforts to preserve the books. They will then paraphrase passages with assistance.

Each day at the end of their independent reading time, students give Book Boosts, one-minute raves about books they've read. Students select a book that they really enjoyed and then give a one-minute talk that generates interest in the book but does not give away the book's ending. Students can boost their books in a variety of ways, including creating alternate book covers, designing posters or flyers, or making promotional bookmarks. Have students take turns giving book boosts with two students giving a Book Boost each class day. These Book Boosts are easy ways to suggest a multitude of titles to students, and they act as a way for students to have something to think about as they read.

Use text features like captions, bold print, glossary, and index to learn about the hot and cold states of water and all about penguins. Students will read an informational text on what makes water freeze, look at cool penguin pictures, learn weird penguin names, and read how penguins enjoy the water in all of its states.

Quotation marks show us which words are part of a conversation or something that someone has said. They show when someone is talking. Quotation marks work in pairs - they are used at the beginning and the end of a quote to separate it from the rest of the writing. You might hear them go by two other names: quotes or inverted commas. In this classroom resource, the students will learn where to place quotation marks. This resource offers informational material, videos, games, quizzes, and worksheets to help further understand this concept.

In this lesson, students explore verb tense through a short, fun video and activity. Shifts in verb tense are useful in helping readers understand actions occurring at different times. Verb tenses should stay consistent in every sentence. This resource provides students with the opportunity to practice identifying shifts in verb tenses. 

In order to fully comprehend reading materials, students need to understand the cause-and-effect relationships that appear in a variety of fiction and nonfiction texts. In this lesson, students learn cause-and-effect relationships through the sharing of a variety of Laura Joffe Numeroff picture books in a Reader's Workshop format. Using online tools or a printed template, students create an original comic strip via the writing prompt, “If you take a (third) grader to….” Students use various kinds of art to illustrate their strip and publish and present their completed piece to peers in a read-aloud format.