Search ALEX...

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.

The teacher will present two pieces of informational text from the website, ReadWorks. Students will interact with these non-fiction texts by annotating the text digitally. The students will answer the questions associated with the articles as an assessment. This learning activity will describe two different threatened species, one plant, and one animal species, and explain how changes in the species' ecosystem led to a population shift. 

In this lesson, the students will learn about some different figures of speech and expressions in the English language. A figure of speech is when we use words creatively in a way that is a little different from what the words mean normally. Expressions like metaphors and similes are used to add rhetorical force to the spoken or written language. This resource offers videos, games, and worksheets to help further understand the concept taught in this lesson.

Pronoun case is determined by how we use the pronoun in a sentence. There are three ways: subjective, when the pronoun does something; objective, when something is done to our pronoun; and possessive when our pronoun possesses something.

In this lesson, students access their own knowledge of characters from a variety of texts to make comparisons between the familiar concepts of hero and villain and the new concept of the Byronic hero, a term coined from Lord Byron and his writings in the 19th century. They first list heroes and villains with which they are familiar and discuss any examples that may blur the lines between the two. Using Stephenie Meyer's Twilight and the character Edward Cullen, students identify the characteristics of the Byronic hero in a Venn diagram and diagram other characters with these traits. Students then choose a project—an expository essay, photo collage, or book cover—to extend their understanding of this complex and compelling character type.

This lesson uses Edward Cullen as an example, but it may be adapted to focus on any Byronic hero that would be appropriate for your classroom.

In this 3-5 lesson, students will explore jazz music and dance, then write a jazz-inspired cinquain poem. They will build their background on the history of jazz and its use of improvisation to demonstrate jazz dance movements. 

In this lesson, students will explore the themes of grief and loss in William Shakespeare's Hamlet using a video from Shakespeare Uncovered. (This lesson is best used during a reading of Hamlet.)

Site or sight Write or right? Because there are many words in the English language that sound the same but are spelled differently, students may struggle to write the right spelling for certain words. These word types known to complicate spelling and vocabulary are called homophones. An integral part of students' vocabulary and spelling development is to learn and understand the meaning of these homophones. In this minilesson, students begin by generating a list of homophones with which they are familiar with. Students then listen to a song, identify homophones in the song, and discuss their meaning and spelling. Finally, student groups create a skit that depicts the meaning of a homophone. As the group performs the skit, their classmates attempt to guess the homophone that is on display. Groups finish the lesson by creating a comic strip version of their skit to be compiled into a class "homophone book."