Curated OER
A More Perfect Union: The Story of Our Constitution
Sit back, relax, and transport to 1787! This instructional activity on the Constitution begins with guided imagery of the Constitutional Convention. The class reads A More Perfect Union: The Story of Our Constitution in an interactive...
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Synonymous Sharks
Pupils locate and read an Internet article on sharks. They write a summary of the article, and complete a Concept of Definition Map using information from the article.
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Face to Face Summary!
Young scholars, while in the computer lab visiting the National Geographic Kids website, fill out a checklist of unimportant/redundant information, look for important events and ideas and search for the author's main idea and supporting...
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Sum It Up
After a review of the steps involved in writing a summary, class members read The Physics of Baseball by Sarah Ives and use a story web to identify the important details to include in their summary. Class members then choose an article...
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Science Summaries are the Bomb!
Fifth graders read a dissection article and complete close reading activities for the text. In this reading skills lesson, 5th graders read an interactive frog dissection article in teams. Student teams complete a KWL chart and write a...
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Lesson Plan # 2: Forest Poems
Students read and write poetry. In this poetry writing lesson, students read and discuss several poems with a "forest" theme, and then write their own forest haiku. Possible publication in the Natural Inquirer is described.
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Whodunit?
Students bring in a variety of books to be approved for reading outside of class and then complete a book review on each one approved. They remember to include a description of the setting and characters, plot summary and a conclusion in...
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Retell And Summarize Text
Help your learners read a text and summarize it using their own words. The main idea and important details of an article are discussed before individuals write their summaries. To support discernment about what to include in a summary,...
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Shorten the Length
Learn how to summarize by identifying main ideas and supporting details. Readers cross out unimportant information as they read through a text. Is it a random detail? Cross it out! They then draw a concept map, placing the main idea in...
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Flight Formation: The V's Have It!
Read, revisit, and reflect. Older elementary learners summarize main idea 6using key details. They consider the V formation that birds fly in, summarize an informational text, and write critical thinking questions.
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Fact and Opinion Lesson Plan
How are fact and opinion different? Middle schoolers explore fact and opinion and write articles pertaining to a football match, eliminating all opinion statements in order to focus on the facts. Then they discuss bias in the media....
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Cruise the News
Students utilize newspapers as a resource to complete various tasks. They read articles, write summaries, investigate the classified section, write commercials, and circle spelling words.
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Summarizing: James and the Giant Peach
Text marking and a T-chart format to distinguish important information from trivia help elementary readers summarize effectively. Encouraging readers to construct a chapter summary from paragraph-level topic sentences is another sound...
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Reading to Learn What's The Point
Students explore the benefits of summarizing in this lesson. The students define summarization and review the six step process. They listen as the teachers reads "Land of the Rings" and then write an individual summary using the six...
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Summarization Superstars
How do you read when you know you're going to be summarizing a text? Summarize a nonfiction text with your upper elementary schoolers. Your pupils independently read a nonfiction article and write a summary paragraph using the six-step...
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Forms Of Knowledge
Students put writing pieces into categories to show different organizational features in writing. In this writing lesson plan, students are shown examples of speeches, poems, editorials, cartoons, parodies, historical fiction, and more.
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Summin' It All Up
Students, through teacher modeling and guided practice, explore the five steps/rules of summarizing. Independently, they read a short article and apply the summarization rules and skills (picking out key words, main points, etc.) to...
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To Sum it all Up...
Learners observe and demonstrate the process of summarizing text. They read and discuss the steps to summarize text, then in small groups read and summarize an article about frogs from "National Geographic" online. Independently they...
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Current Events
Students research current events and simulate a newscast of a current news story. They watch the evening news and write a summary of a story of interest, conduct Internet research and complete a worksheet on a current event, and...
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Front Page News
Learners collect and analyze the front pages of various newspapers and perform research on the Titantic tragedy. They choose a name for their newspaper, a headline, gather photographs, and write a front page article. Using computer...
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Short Story Lesson Plan
Students read and discuss the short story, "The McWilliamses and the Burglar Alarm," by Mark Twain. They assume the role of the main characters in the story and write a humorous letter of complaint using a business letter format. They...
Channel Islands Film
Arlington Springs Man: Lesson Plan 4
West of the West's documentary Arlington Springs Man introduces viewers to the remarkable finds on Santa Rosa Island. Archaeologist have discovered on this small island that is part of the Channel island chain, human and pygmy mammoth...
Channel Islands Film
First Contact: Lesson Plan 4 - Grades 5-6
After watching Treasure in the Sea, a documentary about Channel Islands National Park and the video First Contact, about the voyage of Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo to the Channel islands, groups research and then compare the experiences of...
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Lake Log: Diary of the Basin
Learners log news articles about the changes in the Lake Pontchartrain Basin. In this wetlands and news lesson, students track articles about the wetlands area around Lake Pontchartrain, write brief summaries, include pictures, and put...