eSource: Free Teaching Guides

Select a product from the list below to view available teaching guides. Use the tags on left to filter the list.

Cover: Experience Nature: How Time Outside Makes You Feel

Experience Personal Power

Books in the Experience Personal Power series help young readers build personal power to feel secure and confident with themselves. Each book helps kids learn to act, feel, and speak in ways that foster a life of balanced activity and self-care. Research shows that kids… View →

 
Cover: Exposing Torture: Centuries of Cruelty

Exposing Torture

Torture. According to Henry Shue, professor of politics and international relations at the University of Oxford in England, “No other practice except slavery is so universally condemned in law and human convention. Yet, unlike slavery…torture is widespread and growing.” Why… View →

 
Cover: Eyes Open

Eyes Open

Portugal, 1967. Sónia thinks she knows what her future holds. She’ll become a poet, and together she and her artist boyfriend, Zé Miguel, will rise above the government restrictions that shape their lives. The restrictions on what Sónia can do and where she can go without a man’s View →

 
Cover: Eye Spy

Eye Spy

“I spy with my little eye, Something beginning with M. It curls its tail around the stalk and eats the wheat at Harvest. It rhymes with house . . .” Come on a playful journey through the day from dawn to dusk, set in a… View →

 
Cover: Fall Apple Fun

Fall Fun (Early Bird Stories ™)

Entertaining stories follow diverse characters as they celebrate aspects of fall. Each book is sprinkled with critical thinking, recall, and text feature questions to encourage reader engagement. In the back of the books, photos accompany fun facts about fall, and educators can also… View →

 
Cover: Fashion Rules!: A Closer Look at Clothing in the Middle Ages

Fashion Rules!

During the Middle Ages, your position in life was based on birth. This position would follow you throughout your life. To make it easy for others to know your social class, rules about what you could wear—or not wear—were created. Such rules, called sumptuary laws, determined colors of… View →

 
Cover: Finding Family: The Duckling Raised by Loons

Finding Family

Discover the true story of an orphaned mallard duckling being raised by a pair of loons. On a lake in northern Wisconsin in 2019, loon researchers were surprised to discover a mother and father loon caring for a mallard duckling. Normally loons and mallards live… View →

 
Cover: Finding S.A.M.

Finding S.A.M.

Twelve-year-old Zach feels powerless over his autistic and often embarrassing brother who counts light bulbs and wears a Superman shirt every day. In desperation, Zach turns to an imaginary brother in his search for finding normal. Zach just wants a normal seventh grade year where he can View →

 
Cover: Presidents' Day

First Step Nonfiction — American Holidays

These content-rich resources give readers an understanding of why and how we celebrate our national holidays. A simple timeline in the back of each book clarifies how the holiday started and evolved, while a fast-facts section provides interesting details from history and today. View →

 
Cover: What Can Live in a Desert?

First Step Nonfiction — Animal Adaptations

Introduce the concepts of adaptation and habitat to beginning readers. Each title presents the animals found in a specific habitat and invites readers to explore how the animals are adapted to their surroundings. View →

 
Cover: Turtles and Hatchlings

First Step Nonfiction — Animal Families

Facilitate students’ understanding of how young animals resemble their parents. Engaging photos and simple sentence structure will help early emergent readers grasp these concepts quickly. View →

 
Cover: In a Tree

First Step Nonfiction — Animal Homes

Trees aren’t just for birds! Animals live in a variety of homes in every habitat. Direct picture-to-text correspondence makes this series an excellent choice for the budding zoologists in the classroom. View →

 
Cover: Butterflies

First Step Nonfiction — Animal Life Cycles

Captivating photographs of familiar animals help readers learn about a variety of animal life cycles. The selected subjects represent five major classes of animals—insects, birds, amphibians, mammals, and reptiles. View →

 
Cover: Noses

First Step Nonfiction — Animal Traits

Beginning readers will enjoy discovering the traits shared by different animals. They will delight in learning that humans share some of those traits too! Full-color photographs support the text. View →

 
Cover: Web-Spinning Spiders

First Step Nonfiction — Backyard Critters

Engage young readers with basic yet astounding scientific facts about the tiny creatures that live in backyards and parks across the country. Caption call-outs highlight key visual details in the books’ eye-catching images, and informative chapter headings assist emergent readers… View →

 
Cover: Spinning

First Step Nonfiction — Balance and Motion

This series introduces students to different motion concepts—from spinning and rolling and staying still to going from here to there. Colorful photos and simple sentence constructions support beginning readers while teaching key science content. This series meets both science and reading View →

 
Cover: Clothing

First Step Nonfiction — Basic Human Needs

This delightful series teaches students about everyone’s basic human needs. Colorful photographs support vocabulary as students learn about communities and the needs we all share. Supports social studies curriculum. View →

 
Cover: Feathers

First Step Nonfiction — Body Coverings

This beginning reader series describes the different body coverings of familiar animals. Vibrant color photos correspond directly with each page’s simple text to reinforce concepts and vocabulary. View →

 
Cover: A Day

First Step Nonfiction — Calendars

Build readers’ understanding of how we measure time using calendars. Custom photographs illustrate various types of calendars and time-keeping measures, while kid-friendly examples convey the types of the activities done during the day, the week, and months in the year. An activity View →

 
Cover: Ice Cream

First Step Nonfiction — Changing Forms

This series will help students discover how familiar objects change form through heating and cooling. See what happens to popcorn, ice cream, or candles when they are heated or cooled. Each book offers a close yet accessible look at physical or chemical processes—a key component of View →

 
Cover: Heating

First Step Nonfiction — Changing Matter

This science series explains how some forms of matter respond to various forces. Simple text and vivid color photographs encourage students to observe, describe, record, and predict the many types of changes in matter. View →

 
Cover: Being Fair

First Step Nonfiction — Citizenship

This series highlights essential character values that help people get along and be good citizens. Simple text and photographs offer concrete examples, while bulleted lists in the back of each book provide ideas for how readers can achieve these traits at home and at school. View →

 
Cover: Pet Hermit Crab

First Step Nonfiction — Classroom Pets

Introduce students to the dos and dont’s of taking care of common classroom pets. Readers will learn what type of container their pet needs, what their pet eats, and what its daily habits are. Fun facts in the back of each book will also capture interest. View →

 
Cover: Purple

First Step Nonfiction — Colors

Using simple vocabulary and photographs, this series introduces beginning readers to colors. The easy-to-read, repetitive format helps students recognize sight words and become familiar with simple sentence construction. View →