Words can uplift others, but they can also cause harm. In this lesson, students will hear the story Desmond and the Very Mean Word, and they'll discuss the power of positive and negative words in friendships, school, and community.

Increase student comprehension by teaching your students strategies to figure out the meaning of unknown words. This lesson can be used as a stand alone activity or a support lesson for the Be a Nonfiction Detective lesson.

Teaching your students about root words is a great way to strengthen their vocabulary and comprehension. Use this lesson to introduce the root words tele and sign.

With this super sensory lesson, students will make sense of a variety of sensory words. In addition to exploring sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell words, students will make connections to real-life experiences!

This lesson will help students understand multiple-meaning words through the use of artistic and theatrical representation! Use as a stand-alone activity or a support lesson for Let's Compare and Contrast Nonfiction Texts!

Use this lesson to teach your students about Frederick Douglass and the impact that words had on his life. First, they will read a picture book that shares facts and beautiful illustrations to teach about his life. Then, they'll complete a graphic organizer with peers to record important details and events in his life. Students will then demonstrate understanding by creating a poster with images and key words that stand out when they think about Frederick Douglass.

Help your students make powerful connections in their writing! This lesson will teach your learners about using the correct transition words when writing personal narratives.

Teach your students to look for the repeated words and phrases in a nonfiction text as they pick out important information. This lesson can stand alone or be used as a pre-lesson for the Determining Importance lesson.

Do your students struggle with word choices? In this lesson, students will learn strategies for choosing vivid words for their poetry. Although the “persona poem” is used as a model, any type of poetry can be used!

Use this lesson to teach your students how to retell the beginning, middle, and end of a story using sequencing words and phrases. This lesson can stand alone or be used as a pre-lesson for the Story Structure Rollercoaster lesson.

This lesson will help students explore using a dictionary to figure out tricky words with suffixes. Use as a stand-alone activity or a support for the Understanding Academic Vocabulary in a Nonfiction Text lesson.

Improve your students' writing skills with this neat lesson on adjectives. From bright to dark, light to heavy, your little writers will be able to describe the world around them in no time.

Learn how the languages of people indigenous to North America have contributed American English. Each student will research a word derived from an indigenous language and design a page for a class book featuring up to 30 indigenous words.

Your little detectives will love stretching their observation muscles in this lesson on sleuthing and finding clues. After paying close attention to their classmates, they'll make lists of clues and use them in a fun-filled guessing game.

Help your students master compound words with compound words creations! Using an arts-integrated approach, this lesson incorporates diagrams and illustrations that can lead to understanding the fuller meanings of compound words.

Test your students ability to find words as they practice reading and spelling words with ending consonant blends in a timed game!

Can you hear the words here? Help your students distinguish homophones with this lesson. They'll be identifying the correct words in no time!

This lesson includes a bunch of activities to help students learn about compound words. Your second-graders will love guessing and illustrating compound words in this colorful lesson plan!

Help your students learn new vocabulary in this hands-on lesson. Your class will learn new words by adding a silent e on the end of familiar CVC words.

This lesson will help your students use sentence level context clues to decode challenging words in a nonfiction text. Students will enjoy learning about maps and figuring out tricky words along the way!

Suffixes can do some amazing things. They can turn "power" into "powerful," "big" into "bigger," and "fear" into "fearless." This hands-on lesson allows young writers to build their own words using different root words and suffixes.

Real people and characters in stories show who they are by their words and actions. Help students make the connection between a character trait and the words or actions that support it by using Character Cards.

Do your students need extra practice forming words with the suffixes -er and* -est* depending on the context? With an abundance of words to explore, your students will learn how to determine which suffix is best for each individual context.

When reading, we all encounter unknown words at times. But how do we figure them out? In this lesson, students learn how to become a “human dictionary” by using a variety of strategies to figure out the meaning of unknown words.

Students will practice reading and spelling grade level sight words through a fast-paced game of tic-tac-toe.

Second graders will love choosing from their tricky word activity menu as they practice reading and spelling irregularly spelled sight words.

This lesson introduces young learners to prefixes. It also gives them hands-on experience with building words using prefix and root word cards.

Contractions can be tricky, but they don't have to be! Through this lesson, students will gain hands-on experience putting words together to form common contractions.

Use a silly movie clip and fun activity to teach your second graders how to spell and recognize words with the inflectional ending -ing.

Bing! Bam! Boom! In this bombastic lesson, students will learn about onomatopoeia and create word art to describe the sounds these words make.