Florida Center for Reading Research
Comprehension: Monitoring for Understanding, Simple Summary
Can your class sum up a text in a few sentences? Help them build this skill by starting nice and slow. For this summarizing activity, the teacher marks the main ideas with sticky notes. Learners read and reread the text, pausing at the...
DePaul University
Learn about Fables
Expose young readers to a new genre of fiction with a short reading passage. After learning about fables, children identify the main idea and supporting details in preparation for writing a short summary. Read the text as a class,...
For the Teachers
Main Idea Outline
Find the main idea in an informational text with a versatile lesson. Three levels of differentiation help you implement the strategy in any age or class level, based on the ability and objectives of your learners.
DePaul University
Working at the Television Station
There's a lot that goes on behind the scenes of a local news program. Read this passage independently or as a whole class to learn about all the different people that work hard to bring us the news. Afterward, young learners determine...
University of Kansas
Newspaper in the Classroom
Newspapers aren't only for reading—they're for learning skills, too! A journalism unit provides three lessons each for primary, intermediate, and secondary grades. Lessons include objectives, materials, vocabulary, and procedure, and...
Mary Pope Osborne, Classroom Adventures Program
The Backpack Travel Journals
Strap on those backpacks, it's time to travel through history with this literature unit based on the first four books of The Magic Tree House series. While reading through these fun stories, children create story maps, record interesting...
Scholastic
Comprehension During Independent Reading
Ideal for a language arts class, literary unit, or independent reading assignment, a set of reading worksheets address a wide array of skills. From poetic elements to nonfiction text features, you can surely find a valuable resource in...
Curated OER
Nonfiction Genre Mini-Unit: Persuasive Writing
Should primary graders have their own computers? Should animals be kept in captivity? Young writers learn how to develop and support a claim in this short unit on persuasive writing.
Curriculum Corner
ELA Common Core Checklists for K-6
In the hustle and bustle of life in the classroom, it's easy for teachers to lose track of the standards they have taught, and those that still need to be addressed. This Common Core checklist provides educators with an easy-to-use...
National Council of Teachers of English
Writing Acrostic Poems with Thematically Related Texts in the Content Areas
Scholars scour thematically aligned texts to gather a bank of words they can use in an original acrostic poem.