Students explore stereotypes in the media and representations of race, class, ethnicity, and gender by analyzing comics over a two-week period and then re-envisioning them with a "comic character makeover."

Students engage in a brief writing assignment that concretely illustrates how language and gender stereotyping interact causally.

This twist on readers theater has students prepare original news programs based on incidents in a recent reading, as they explore standard literary elements of character, conflict, resolution, and setting.

In this alternative to the traditional book report, students respond to a play they have read by creating a resume for one of its characters.

Students name unnamed chapters in a novel they are reading. They discuss possible chapter names, considering accuracy, word choice, and connotation, before settling on a choice.

Students must think critically to create comic strips highlighting six important scenes from a book they have read.

Students work together to analyze three poems about America with varying points of view.

Multidimensional, challenging, and popular with students, comics provide an excellent way to introduce the concept of genres.

Inspired by their curiosity about animals, students work together to research an animal of their choice and present the information they gather to an authentic audience.

In this lesson, students work with proverbs from home and from around the world, exploring how these maxims are tied to a culture's values and everyday experience.

Students are introduced to proverbs and explore how proverbs are often tied to a culture's values and everyday experience, although their meanings are not always readily apparent to us today.

Students are guided through an informal exploration of nonfiction texts and child-oriented Websites, learning browsing and skimming techniques for the purpose of gathering interesting information.

In this minilesson, students organize information they compile while doing research for a written report on a selected topic.

Students find examples of adjectives in a shared reading. Then students "become" major characters in a book and describe themselves and other characters, using powerful adjectives.

Students must "become" a character in a novel in order to describe themselves and other characters using powerful adjectives.

Students build classroom community as they get to know each other and their teacher better by sharing what they like to do outside school.

Students explore figurative language in poetry by reading and writing riddle poems.

Students "become" one of the major characters in a book and describe themselves and other characters, using lists of accurate, powerful adjectives.

Students analyze Voices in the Park by Anthony Browne to determine how an author keeps an audience interested by creating voice and to applying that knowledge to their own writing.