This lesson plan teaches students about Jean-Michel Basquiat and his life as a child. First, students will listen to a story and figure out the main topic and details. Next, students will be asked to think deeply about what it means to be an artist and some of the types of art they like to create. Perfect for first graders and second graders, the lesson Black Artists: Basquiat highlights reading informational texts and building vocabulary.

Help your second graders hone their comparing and contrasting skills with this reading lesson using The Rough Face Girl by Rafe Martin. This version on the Cinderella story is a Common Core recommended text.

Inventors and their novel inventions are always a thrilling topic! In the lesson Researching Black Inventors, first graders and second graders are encouraged to research the rich history of African American inventors. This engaging lesson plan provides students with an opportunity to learn all about inventors they find interesting and the impact those inventors have on the world. Perfect for Black History Month, this learning activity highlights informational writing skills and helps build students' vocabulary.

Help your second graders hone their research skills using this animal-themed lesson! Students will enjoy choosing an animal, identifying questions, and researching their answers as they learn about writing informative essays.

Wondering how to teach your second graders about inflectional endings? Look no further. After playing with dice and learning through song, your students will be adding -ing and -ed like pros.

Ask an important question this month: What does an activist do? This engaging lesson can be used leading up to Martin Luther King Jr. Day (and year-round). It supports students in understanding what it means to be an activist and how Martin Luther King Jr. used collaborative action to change the world and speak out against oppression. Perfect for first graders and second graders, this activity explores word meaning and other reading and writing skills.

Second graders love field trips and sharing their opinions! This fun lesson combines both, as students must convince their teacher to take them on a field trip by practicing their opinion writing and using paragraph structure.

Crack the “VC-silent E” code to track down sneaky E syllables with this fun cut and paste game for second graders. Your students will be able to identify common words after identifying this pattern.

A fun spin on a classic game! This sight word game will help your students with their reading fluency and reinforce foundational reading skills. Students should be fairly fluent in reading Pre-Primer Dolch sight words prior to the lesson.

Students will work together as well as individually to add up coins to a desired amount. This real life skill will be made fun when students get to physically count out their cents!

Teach your students about picture walks as a strategy to understand the author's purpose in a fictional text. This lesson can be used as a stand-alone lesson or as support for the Examining Author's Purpose in a Fictional Text lesson.

Give your students a chance to hone their reading comprehension skills as they learn about the characters, setting, and plot of their favorite fiction books by creating a story map.

Deep relaxation in school? Yes, it is possible! Through this process you will guide students to consciously focus on relaxing various body parts, leading to a visualization to help relax their full body mindfully.

Students participate in a classroom scavenger hunt with a partner to measure common classroom objects using a ruler.

In Fact or Opinion: Part 3, your students will take what they learned from the previous lessons and apply it by writing their own personal opinion essays.

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream bar graphs! Students will get the basics of bar graphs down with this lesson that shows how data collection and graph composition works in a classroom setting.

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.

Use this lesson to reinforce using sentence level context clues to decode challenging words in a nonfiction text. This can be used as a stand alone activity or a support the Using Context Clues to Understand Word Meanings lesson.

Make your students global citizens with this lesson that has them learn about the different cultures of the world.

Teach students to be stronger readers before they even begin reading! All they need is a book, their mind, and some sticky notes!

What do like to groove to? Bebop or hip-hop? In this Black History Month lesson plan, students will listen to and learn about two music genres heavily influenced by African-Americans. Then they will write about which genre they prefer.

In this lesson, students will read text features and discuss how each text feature relates to the main idea of a nonfiction text. Use a stand alone activity or a support for the Examining the Author's Purpose in a Nonfiction Text lesson.

The Pledge of Allegiance has been recited for years, but how many truly know its meaning? This lesson allows our student citizens a chance to learn and appreciate the pledge, as they understand the meaning behind it.

Give your students a chance to hone their reading comprehension skills by creating nonfiction text summaries in this introductory lesson.

Provide students with an opportunity to closely examine the difference between a topic and main idea in a nonfiction text. Use as a stand-alone activity or a support for the Finding the Main Idea and Details in a Nonfiction Text lesson.

Make some plot nachos in this engaging lesson! Your students will practice reading comprehension when they separate a story into plot, setting, characters, spicy actions, and more.

Subjects and verbs agree! This grammar lesson includes a fun interactive segment that students will love, and they will practice matching subjects to their verbs.

Give your students a chance to create contractions and play with macaroni with this fun-filled reading lesson. Early learners will have a blast using flash cards to identify ways word combinations.

The science of matter becomes as fun as it is educational when George gets in the mix! After watching Curious George work with his 'floppafication' pot, students will learn about matter and force.

Root, stem, flower, leaf! In this hands-on science lesson, your students will create their own plants to help them identify and remember the parts of a plant.