This article examines the reading comprehension strategy known as making connections. It involves linking what is being read (the text) to what is already known (schema, or background knowledge). The author provides links to four online resources that will help readers use the strategy in K-5 science and literacy classrooms. The article appears in the free, online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle, which integrates science and literacy instruction.

The reading strategy known as making connections can greatly enhance students' understanding of any text. This article offers resources that teachers can use to instruct K-5 students in using the strategy. The free, online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle integrates science and literacy instruction. Each issue contains lessons and activities that combine literacy and science experiences.

Goal/Objective:The students will construct meaning of an informational text while developing a multicultural perspective. Overview:This comprehension lesson focuses on a variety of reading skills, including making predictions and inferences, comparing/contrasting, answering inferential/critical questions, applying context clues and word structure to determine the meaning of words, and making text-to-self/text-to-world connections. All of these skills are taught alongside students learning about the Civil Rights Movement, the impact it has had on our nation, and the importance behind the story of Ruby Bridges.Grade Level:This lesson focuses on 4th grade standards, but can be adapted for any upper elementary classroom. Modifications/Accommodations:This lesson can be modified/accommodated for students with special needs. The lesson is derived from the ReadWorks.org website. If teachers create a free account to the website, students can have the passage, as well as the comprehension questions, read aloud to them. 

This article discusses the reading instruction strategy of predicting and shows how it applies to science learning in the elementary school grades. It appears in the free online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle, which provides a first introduction to the Seven Essential Principles of Climate Literacy.

In this lesson, students will develop media literacy skills by analyzing and evaluating real versus fake news sources. Students learn how to identify various types of fakes news and apply critical thinking to evaluate if the information is reliable and unreliable.Image attribution: https://flic.kr/p/XKaGVH

In this lesson, students will develop media literacy skills by analyzing and evaluating real versus fake news sources. Students learn how to identify various types of fakes news and apply critical thinking to evaluate if the information is reliable and unreliable.Image attribution: https://flic.kr/p/XKaGVH

Informational text piece discussing how new NFL rules are making football safer. Student handout and video. High interest.

This nonfiction article, written for students in grades 4-5, explores lichens: a partnership between an alga and a fungus. Modified versions are available for students in younger grades.

This article describes how the lifestyle of Alaska's Inupiat people have changed over time, and the new challenges they now face as a result of a changing climate. Versions are available for students in grades K-1, 2-3 and 4-5. Related science and literacy activities are included.

This unit shows instructional approaches that are likely to help ELLs meet new standards in English Language Arts. Built around a set of famous persuasive speeches, the unit supports students in reading a range of complex texts. It invites them to write and speak in a variety of ways and for different audiences and purposes. Students engage in close reading of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech, Aristotleí˘ä‰ĺ䋢s Three Appeals, Robert Kennedyí˘ä‰ĺ䋢s On the Assassination of Martin Luther King, and George Wallaceí˘ä‰ĺ䋢s The Civil Rights Movement: Fraud, Sham, and Hoax, Barbara Jordaní˘ä‰ĺ䋢s All Together Now. The five lesson culminate with student's constructing their own persuasive texts.

This article from Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle provides ideas on how school librarians can work with elementary teachers to teach about the Sun's impact on weather and climate. The author introduces the Standards for the 21st Century Learner, developed by the American Association of School Librarians. The author focuses on Standard 1, which calls for students to inquire, think critically, and gain knowledge through developing and refining questions, investigating answers, seeking divergent perspectives in information, and assessing whether the information found answers the questions posed. The free, online magazine draws its themes from the Seven Essential Principles of Climate Literacy, with each issue focusing on one of the seven principles.

This is a short quiz on CCSS.RI.9-10.1, featuring an excerpt from Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from a Birmingham Jail". The passage has a Dale-Chall difficulty level of 9-10, and a Flesch-Kincaid level of 10.7.

The New Deal and World War II unit features lessons ranging from Social Security to the dropping of the atomic bomb. It includes a Structured Academic Controversy examining whether the New Deal was a success, and an Inquiry into Japanese-Americans internment during the war. In the Social Security lesson plan, students evaluate historical claims and examine primary documents from the period. Students explore causes of the Zoot Suit Riots in California, and take part in a structured role-play where groups are asked to choose an image that commemorates the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

These lessons focus on events surrounding the Cold War. The first is an inquiry into its causes, comparing Soviet and American perspectives. Opening Up the Textbook lessons ask students to question textbook accounts of the CIA's covert operations in Guatemala, and compare how North and South Korean textbooks cover the Korean War. Students analyze declassified government documents about the Cuban Missile Crisis, and try to determine whether the U.S. intended to escalate military operations in Vietnam before the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. In the lesson on Truman and MacArthur, students gauge public response to MacArthur's dismissal by analyzing memos and letters sent to President Truman.

In this unit, students explore social, cultural, and political events that helped define America in the decades following the Second World War. The lesson on the Civil Rights movement revolves around the question: Why did the Montgomery Bus Boycott succeed? In another, students compare speeches by JFK and John Lewis regarding the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In the Women in the 1950s lesson plan, students use secondary sources and popular images to explore whether "the happy housewife" was reality or perception. Finally, students will encounter opposing views on whether the Great Society was successful, and what led many Americans came to oppose the Vietnam War.

The Reading Like a Historian curriculum turns students into historical investigators. Students may find this change jarring after a steady diet of reading a textbook and answering questions. The three lessons in the Introduction--Lunchroom Fight, Evaluating Sources, and Snapshot Autobiography--help students recognize skills of historical inquiry they already practice everyday, such as reconciling conflicting claims and evaluating the reliability of narrative accounts. The challenge is to apply these skills while reading. Reading Like a Historian classroom posters remind students what questions they should be asking as they read historical documents.

The lessons in the Colonial Unit introduce students to many of the themes in the curriculum. In the Pocahontas lesson, students question Disney's account of Pocahontas's encounter with John Smith. Students engage in three additional inquiries: one about the Puritans, one about the causes of King Philip's War, and one about the causes of the Salem Witch trials. The Colonial Unit is unique in that it introduces students to different types of historical evidence such as maps and passenger lists, and asks students to consider what claims can be made on the basis of these special documents.

The Revolution and Early America Unit covers the standard eighteenth century topics that would appear in any textbook. These lessons, however, will push students to dig deeper as they read the documents and develop historical arguments about topics ranging from the Great Awakening (why was George Whitefield so popular?) to the Stamp Act (why were Colonists upset about the Stamp Act?) to the Constitution (why did the Founding Fathers keep slavery in the Constitution?). Each lesson offers primary documents that promote conflicting interpretations. The unit will introduce students to historiography, as they contrast Bernard Bailyn's interpretaton of the Declaration of Independence to Howard Zinn's account. These lessons will emphasize the historical reading skills students will practice all year.

Unit 4 primarily cover topics dealing with westward expansion during the nineteenth century. The exceptions are the lessons on Nat Turner and Irish immigration. These are included for chronological reasons, and to show students how historical trends can occur simultaneously. Both themes (slavery and immigration) are revisited in Units 5 and 6. This unit features several elaborate lesson structures: a Structured Academic Controversy (SAC) and and Inquiry. In the SAC on Lewis and Clark, students debate whether or not Lewis and Clark were respectful to the Native Americans they encountered on their journey, while the Inquiry asks students to investigate what motivated Texans to declare their independence. Several lessons, especially on Manifest Destiny and Indian Removal, ask students to consider the perspectives of historical actors whose world views may seem foreign or even incomprehensible.

In the Civil War and Reconstruction unit, students engage in contentious historiographic debates about the period--Was Lincoln a racist? Was Reconstruction a success or failure? Was John Brown a "misguided fanatic"? Did Lincoln free the slaves, or did the slaves free themselves? The unit includes two Structured Academic Controversy lessons, an Opening Up the Textbook lesson on sharecropping, and a look at Thomas Nast's political cartoons.