Students learn to sing the song, "A-Hunting We Will Go" with the original verses and learn to sing several new verses that support rhyming concepts. They then brainstorm pairs of rhyming words to create their own verses for the song. As a follow up activity, students can create original verses using other simple rhyming songs as a framework.

The activities in this lesson provide a foundation for using nonfiction resources for developing and answering questions about gathered information. Using a wide variety of nonfiction literature, students learn to sort and categorize books to begin the information-gathering process. Then, working with partners and groups, using pictures and text, students are guided through the process of gathering information, asking clarifying questions, and then enhancing the information with additional details. Students complete the lesson by collaboratively making “Question and Answer” books for the classroom library. This is a high-interest foundation builder for using nonfiction literature in research as well as for pleasure reading

This resource was created as part of the CESA #1 EL OER Project to help elementary newcomer EL students learn vocabulary about places around school. Using the given template, teachers and students can create a personalized book showcasing different rooms/parts of the school and the teachers/ school staff that they interact with throughout the day. After creating the book, emergent readers will have a pattern book containing their name and picture clues to help them practice reading skills.

This mini unit walks students through the question/discovery process of nonfiction literature.  The first lesson encourages students to wonder while reading.  Then students research to find the answers to their questions.  They explore ways to show/write their new learning.  As a class the kids work to publish 1 or 2 classroom books on the research topic.  This is a great way to introduce the nonfiction unit and then let each student write thier own question book based on the process they used with the class book.

Do worms live underground? Are they good diggers? Can they really read and write? As students read Doreen Cronin's Diary of a Worm in this lesson, they learn to separate the facts from the fictional details. Students begin the lesson by brainstorming what they know about worms. They then begin examining the book in layers. Four read-aloud sessions engage students by focusing attention on different features of the text in each session. In a whole-group setting, students explore the illustrations, fictional details, nonfiction details, and captions and speech bubbles. In this way, students are given concrete strategies that they can use to help differentiate narrative and informational elements in other books they read.

Junie B., as she insists on being called, is an opinionated, lively, character in Barbara Park's series of books, and she is sure to delight primary students. In this unit, the teacher reads aloud selections from Junie B., First Grader (at last!). Students discuss the text with a partner and then individually compose sentences about key events from the story. Each student also creates and adds items to a mystery box, or a box that holds items or pictures referenced in the story. After students have listened to the entire story, they use their mystery boxes to retell the story to a classmate. As a culminating activity, students use the mystery boxes and the sentences they composed to make a related stapleless book about the story.

This lesson uses the book Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type by Doreen Cronin to teach students word identification strategies. Through shared readings, teachers and students read and reread text from the book with fluency and expression. With repeated teacher modeling and guided practice, students learn to identify rimes or word families and apply their knowledge to the decoding of new words.

This series of eight lessons has students compare information found in fiction and non-fiction texts related to whales.  Students learn to formulate research questions, interact with an online scientist and write letters using the writing process.

Our goal is for our students to become proficient readers and writers who display agency and independence. This interactive hyperdoc training module, about UDL and Reading Workshop, is designed to help educators develop an ever-growing toolkit of strategies that will remove barriers to learning and create options for how instruction is presented, how students express their ideas, and how we can engage students in their learning.

A multi-age primary classroom teacher uses formative assessment as a barometer of student learning. She records anecdotal notes about her students' reading progress within an assessment notebook and references the notes for future instruction.