Introduce readers to Mildred Taylor's Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry with a lesson that sets the context for the novel. Class members research the bigotry in Mississippi during the Great Depression and identify examples in the story of how...

Determine your class's prior knowledge about the necessities of life with this pre-assessment for a unit on living things. Learners draw pictures of themselves with all the things they need to live, grow, and survive. These drawings will...

Imagine having to give up cell phones, computers, and TV? What would be lost? What gained? An examination of the Drokpa, a nomadic people who live in the grasslands of Tibet, provides class members an opportunity to consider how access...

Focus on vocabulary, comprehension, and analysis while reading A Weave of Woods, a colorful picture book by Robert D. San Souci. Young learners use worksheets to preview, predict, practice paraphrasing, and make comparisons. The...

Prompt your class to interact with Jack London's Call of the Wild. By analyzing the events in the novel, middle schoolers discover how human experiences create who a person becomes. They critique and analyze the reading, focusing on...

Students define and explore the term "survivor" through the study of real-life stories of survival. They interview a person whom he/she considers to be a survivor, and share their interviews with the class.

Story chains connect literary concepts, reinforce context clues, and even help learners predict what's coming next! Using words from the next chapter of Sharon Creech's Walk Two Moons, middle schoolers craft story chains to...

Students demonstrate the interrelationships of animals and plants. In this ecology instructional activity, students discuss the things plants and animals need for survival and study the glacier food chain. Students simulate the web of...

Avi's Crispin: The Cross of Lead is the focus of a teacher's guide that provides background information on 14th Century England, a plot summary, discussion questions, activities, and resource links. A must-have for those who use this...

Have your class practice their comprehension skills using this resource. After reading Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George, learners engage in cause and effect activities, identify story elements and figurative language, and...

A lovely guided reading lesson awaits you and your students. They read the book,Corn is Maize: The Gift of the Indians, by Aliki, summarize the important events of the story, and describe how corn has helped develop culture in America.

Accompany the African folktale, Anansi the Spider, with a collection of five lessons, each equipped with supplemental activities. Lessons offer multidisciplinary reinforcement in English language arts, social studies, science,...

In a hands-on learning activity, pupils read about and recreate the experience of Harriet Jacobs, author of one of the most famous slave narratives of all time in which she describes her years of hiding from her master in a confined...

Explore ocean habitats with a lesson that showcases the home of manatees and loggerhead turtles in Belize. Here, pupils compare and contrast the homes of ocean animals to those of humans, listen to an original short story about...

Bud followed a series of rules from Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis. The question is, how did he use those rules to thrive or survive? After a grand discussion, class members explore the novel to locate and cite textual...

Trace a survivor's story using a timeline, map skills, poetry and/or prose and photography, and make a visual representation of a survivor's journey through his or her life as a culminating activity for the class and the survivor....

What was it like to enlist as a soldier in the Civil War? By using enlistment papers, young scholars consider this question. After they've looked at the primary source and discussed it, they create a short story of a fictional soldier to...

After reading Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, one of the most famous slave narratives of all time, learners imagine what it would have been like to experience the small dimensions of her hiding space. They then...

Students use the Internet to read about an explorer's survival in the Antarctic. They try to find a better route for him to have taken.

Ninth graders compare events in the story "Lord of the Flies" to real life events in our world. They create a manual and text describing the elements of survival. They create a poster of a conch shell that includes the scientific name, a...

Learners become familiar with the Inupiaq culture. In this Inupiaq instructional activity, students listen to read alouds about the life style of the Inupiaq in Alaska, Learners understand the twelve core values of the Inupiaq people....

Students read The Complete Maus to explore how Maus is actually three books in one. In groups, they evaluate the book as a tale of surviving the Holocaust and a tale of impacting future generations. They examine the conditions at...

Young scholars read true stories of teenagers who defied Hitler and avoided participation in the Hitler Youth. They discuss the stories paying attention to the dangers and incredible peer pressure that these children faced. They...

What items would you need to survive if you were stranded in a remote place? Using chapter 10 of Gary Paulsen's Hatchet, middle-schoolers work through a Six Trait writing activity to create a story about their own survival in a similar...