This recurring lesson encourages students to comprehend their reading through inquiry and collaboration. They choose important quotations from the text and work in groups to formulate "quiz" questions that their peers will answer.

It is a vital skill to learn to respond to what we read. Teach students the important skill of sharing books by creating a book report with this simple lesson plan. There are a variety of options for students to choose from and a rubric attached.

This lesson guides students in an examination of a poet's use of figurative language and word choice to convey themes of belonging and identity.  Students will delve into the concept of the unit theme, “Belonging” and the essential question, "In what ways does our need to feel a sense of belonging conflict with our individuality?" Students will write a short essay analyzing the ways in which a poet uses figurative language and word choice to convey the speaker's sense of him/herself as an individual and as someone who feels he/she is not accepted. Image source:  "Attain" by Nick Youngson from TheBlueDiamondGallery.com at http://thebluediamondgallery.com/tablet-dictionary/a/attain.html  Creative Commons 3 - CC BY-SA 3.0

This two-day lesson focuses on the reading and analysis of “The Circuit” by Francisco Jiménez. The goal of this lesson is for students to make inferences about the challenges and changes required of the story’s character, Panchito, and to find evidence of the author’s craft that develops the narrative.Students will reflect upon the relevance of the essential question (In what ways does our need to feel a sense of belonging conflict with our individuality?) to the narrator's experience.  In particular, students should recognize that the reality of the narrator's individual situation acts as an impediment to his efforts to belong to a community.Although "The Circuit" is classified as a work of fiction, the author states that the stories represent the lives of his family members.  Students will appreciate Jimenez's descriptive, character-driven writing. 

In this resource, students will be asked to use a graphic organizer in order to identify and track the development of theme and character in a literary text. Students will use evidence from the text to construct an evidence based response.

This episode of STEM in 30 covers the end of World War II and the Victory over Japan

Lesson Title:  Using Setting to study the meaning of Home in The One and Only Ivan Grade level: 6 Standard: RL 6.2, 6.6 Time: Objectives: Students will analyze the elements of setting in each of Ivan’s homes throughout the novel.Students will work in groups to find textual examples and evidence.Students will use setting analysis to write a paragraph about the meaning of Home in the novel. Materials: The One and Only Ivan novelsPoster board (1 per pair of students)Markers, crayons, colored pencils of choicePaper and writing utensils Procedures: Assign students their partner pairings, and have them spread out around the room, sitting with their partners.Pass out poster boards (one per pair).  Students should draw two lines through the center of the poster, one horizontally and one vertically to create four equal quadrants on the poster.In a large group discussion, students should help identify the four settings described in the novel which served as HOME for Ivan at some point.  They should then label each quadrant with one of the settings (Mack’s house, jungle, circus, zoo)Give them time to work with their partners to identify as least four textual examples describing each of the four settings.  (four examples x four settings = at least 16 textual references) Students should record these examples in the corresponding quadrant of the poster.  They should also create a drawing or visual representation of each setting in the corresponding quadrant.Students will then present their posters to the class, sharing at least one example for each setting, so as not to take up too much class time and become too repetitive.Discuss as a full group those details that made each setting either positive or negative.  Have students reflect on what they think HOME means to the author that is conveyed through the character of Ivan.Assign students (individually, no longer in partners) a paragraph writing assignment describing the meaning of HOME in the novel.  They should reference at least four textual examples from their partner projects in their paragraphs.