Give students many opportunities to see how visuals can influence a story's meaning. Show off your acting skills and read a great book to help them learn!

Encourage your students to translate their understanding of theme to poetry. In this lesson, students will evaluate the theme of poems by sketching pictures and citing text evidence.

Take your fourth and fifth graders on a deep dive into the civil rights movement with this lesson on Amelia Boynton Robinson. A key activist in the movement, Amelia played a critical role in organizing the Selma to Montgomery march. Your students will read, annotate, and analyze her biography through multiple reads, before discussing the text with their classmates.

In this lesson, Significance of "Let Freedom Ring" in MLK, Jr.'s Speech, students will be able to understand the allusion Martin Luther King, Jr. makes to the song "My Country 'Tis of Thee." Have students discuss allusions in this speech.