To help develop independent readers, we need to make sure our students are able to identify books they can read independently. Teaching students to pick "just right" books helps them develop reading fluency by reading books at their level.

Help your students with their letter recognition skills with this lesson that has them make their own Autumn Alphabet Tree. This hands-on activity is great even for the most restless students, as they will constantly have something to do.

From the compass rose to the map key, first grade students will learn about three characteristics that make up a map. Symbols are used on maps too, as students practice what they can do!

It's about time to learn about time! Your students will interact with a class made clock and roll the dice to 'make up' a time. But they better know their hour and minute hands apart to find success in this lesson!

It's time to make—and hide—animals! In this lesson, students read a story about camouflage and then create their own animals to hide. Finally, students write an informational paragraph to describe their animals' hiding powers.

In this lesson, students will hear the story Say Something and make promises to each other to speak up when others are lonely or hurt. They will also have an opportunity to express themselves through acts of service and painting.

Use this helpful review or pre-lesson to introduce the idea that letters make the same sound, regardless of their place in a word. Can be used as a stand alone or support lesson for the Same Sound Different Location lesson plan.

Make maps relevant for your class! With an introduction to basic map skills, students will discover the nuts and bolts of how maps are designed. They will even have the chance to map out relevant places like their school and neighborhood!

Make counting fun with colorful counting bears. Students will learn that skip counting is faster than counting by ones. They will also come away from the lesson with ideas of when skip counting can be used.

Help your students make the connection between what they're learning in school and how adults use math in everyday life with this art lesson. Students will sharpen their critical thinking skills and share their ideas for the future.

In this fun fishy lesson plan, students will love getting their creative juices flowing as they make fish pictures all the while practicing how to order numbers. Can be used as a stand alone or support lesson for the It's Raining Numbers! lesson plan.

This little dinosaur … helped build vocabulary skills! Introduce your students to writing with this fun class project using a familiar childhood poem. Your class will write their own verses to create a class book.

Help your students get comfortable with reading with this lesson that makes reading sight words into a game!

Help your class understand what makes AEIO and U so special with this lesson that helps them differentiate between vowels and consonants.

What makes a poem a poem? And what makes a story a story? In this lesson, students learn to distinguish between different types of texts while analyzing the sentences and words they encounter.

This lesson will take the fear out of writing by allowing your students to write about what makes them happy. It provides a simple way to give young writers creative freedom.

Phonological awareness is essential for reading success. This lesson puts the student in control of creating, reading, and sorting CVC words in interactive ways.

In this social skills lesson, students will get to practice identifying their feelings while thinking about what makes them feel happy. Identifying feelings is an important social skill for kindergarten students to master as they begin to navigate a new social structure, school!

What makes winter so special? What about spring, summer, and fall? In this lesson students will get to think all about what happens in each of the four seasons!

Aid your students in becoming the best citizens they can be with this lesson that teaches students how to be, and what makes, a good citizen.

Sorting takes on a new challenge for students in this activity which engages their critical thinking skills. As students determine defining attributes, they’ll figure out what makes a shape a shape!

Introduce your class to composite shapes with this lesson that reviews geometric shapes and makes use of tangram puzzles. This lesson will give your students a strong base for learning geometry later on in their school careers.

This lesson is about Community Heroes. It describes what community heroes do. It gives your students a good idea of what makes community heroes special.

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.

Learning about shapes isn't "square" with this lesson! Students will learn what makes up a shape and learn to draw them themselves which will turn into a fun hands-on clay molding activity.

Children love animals! Use this lesson plan to teach your students about subtraction. Show them how the numbers go down as they cross out the animals. Their action makes the numbers reduce!

Your students will use primary and their own mixed secondary colors to paint a beautiful still life.

Your students will learn all about what makes a fictional character special when they become character detectives! Use this lesson to introduce the concept of using key details from a text to gather information.

Students will learn to structure their written arguments as they create their own class paper full of opinion editorial pieces in this fun, real-world driven lesson. Step right up and write all about it!

Are your students ready to learn about questions and statements? Well, this lesson is definitely ready to provide some help. Through playing a fun game, young readers will improve their language abilities.