Creating an illustrated alphabet book of action words, from "attack" to "zap", reinforces the definition of verbs as it stretches and expands students' vocabulary.

Learn about the adjective order of Standard American English and your new favorite memory aid: DOSA-SCOMP.

This page contains sequential and supplemental activities that help teachers teach students to read word families, compound words, contractions, double-letter words, silent-letter words, -ed words and 's words.

Paige and David talk about using apostrophes to show that something belongs to multiple people.

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.

TL;DW: affect's a verb and effect's a noun. But there's a little more to it than that.

In the story, Alexander, Who Used to Be Rich Last Sunday, Alexander receives a dollar from his grandparents that he plans to save, but he spends it all, a little at a time. In this lesson, students count by twos to fill a container with 100 pennies. They are asked whether 100 pennies is the same amount of money as one dollar. They listen to the story and as Alexander spends his money, students come up and remove the correct number of pennies from a container. At the end of the story, students are again asked if 100 pennies is the same amount of money as one dollar. Students discuss the choices that Alexander made and give advice on how he could save his money to reach his goal of buying a walkie-talkie.

In this informational text, elementary school readers learn about the difference between weather and climate and about components of the climate system. The text can be used to practice visualizing and other comprehension strategies. Available in K-2 and 3-5 grade bands and as an illustrated book as well as a text document, the story appears in the online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle.

Students explore their towns' landmarks, symbols, and people; look at brochures and other informational tools; practice writing for a specific audience and revising; and work collaboratively to create a brochure.

This is an activity for lower primary classes to help students learn about the alphabet. Students are given a letter and are told to choose an animal that begins with the same letter.

In this lesson, students will explore the outdoor classroom finding objects and determining the first letter.

Students write original stories using alphabetical order, beginning each page with a new letter, and then illustrate their texts in class or at home with their families.

Through a close reading of "Amelia Bedelia", students reread the material to discuss text-dependent questions, promoting deep thinking about the text and its characters.

his lesson uses music and art in a vocabulary study of unfamiliar words from the song "America the Beautiful," increasing students' vocabulary while also increasing their knowledge of U.S. geography. A discussion to activate students' prior knowledge about sights and scenery throughout the United States is followed by a read-aloud and introduction to the song "America the Beautiful," which is then sung in each session of the lesson. Students learn the meanings of the song's words through shared reading and the use of context clues and images. Students then use photographs, illustrations, and descriptive language to create a mural shaped like the United States. Finally, through pictures and words, students reflect on what they have learned. This lesson is appropriate and adaptable for any patriotic event or holiday, and many of the vocabulary strategies are adaptable for other texts or word lists, as well.

Supporting inquiry-based research projects, the Animal Inquiry interactive invites elementary students to explore animal facts and habitats using writing prompts to guide and record their findings.

What do living things need to survive? Students will explore in their outdoor setting for animals in their habitat and generate a list of things found in the environment that support the life of the animals observed. In groups, students will identify the basic needs through a sticky note activity and then research these basic needs for the animals that appear in the fiction book, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? As a culminating activity, students will tap their creativity and use humor to write and publish a silly science-based storybook using Book Creator (or other publishing tool) about the basic needs and thneeds (things that we might think we need, but don’t really need) of these animals.

Students listen to fiction and nonfiction read-alouds and explore selected Websites to identify factual information about animals. This lesson focuses on ants, but can be adapted to any animal.

There is *one* extremely rare case in which we use apostrophes to make things plural. David and Paige, KA's resident grammarians, discuss this unusual case.