Scholars reflect upon their reading strengths and challenges to create personal reading goals. Participants use goal-setting verbiage in an accordion-style graphic organizer, a first step in writing a letter that details their reading...

Acquaint your class with informational text through a close reading. First, examine a couple of pages together, looking at text features and content. The whole class focuses on marking down a brief summary of each paragraph before...

Freaky frogs are the focus of a lesson plan designed to boost reading comprehension skills using text features and asking and answering questions. Informational text and a poem supply scholars with animal-related vocabulary and facts. A...

Boost reading comprehension skills with a lesson all about freaky frogs. A poem hooks scholars and takes them into a reading of an informational text followed by peer discussions. A three-page worksheet focuses on text features and...

Focus on similarities and differences with a jigsaw activity that requires pupils to compare Waiting for the Biblioburro to other texts they have read. To prepare, class members first respond to text-dependent questions, moving on to...

Young scholars create tables in a word processing program which helps them organize their text clues when reading a mystery story. They develop reading comprehension strategies while using a computer based graphic organizer in order to...

A mid-unit assessment challenges scholars to use their close reading skills to identify the main idea and key details. After reading a brief excerpt, learners answer a series of questions—multiple-choice, short answer—complete a graphic...

Lesson ten in this unit for the book Bullfrogs at Magnolia Circle, prepares third graders to begin writing an informational paragraph about the adaptations of bullfrogs. First, young writers work either independently or in pairs to...

Here is a handy guide for putting together a research report on birds, or on a selection of other topics (see the added materials.). Individuals are guided to think of three questions about their topic, they narrow down subtopics, use a...

A final assessment marks the end of a unit that takes a close look at a variety of informational texts all about frogs. A graphic organizer aides scholars in planning an accordion paragraph using their recorder forms from previous...

3D printers, selfie sticks, smart watches. GPS, self-driving cars, YouTube. Imagine life without inventions. Believe it or not, these items were all invented in the last 10 years. Inventions, and the inventors responsible for them,...

Here is a well-designed graphic organizer which should help your readers organize the sequence of events from any story they read. The organizer should help any pupil who is trying to piece together events from a story for a book report.

Lesson 7 focuses on building academic vocabulary and writing an explanatory letter with supported textual evidence. For the first five minutes of the lesson, the educator reminds the class of how to read and refer to the accordion...

Writing a paragraph from details found directly in a text is the central focus of this thorough and explicit lesson plan. Using the stories Nasreen's Secret School and Rain School, third graders are lead step-by-step...

Young voyagers face the challenge of the wide dark sea, travel with Yunmi and Halmoni, and even get trapped by the ice as they explore the reading selections offered in these enrichment activities designed for the Houghton...

Why do we read primary source documents? What can they give us that other writings cannot? Provide your learners with any of the primary sources attached here (there are seven), and have them complete the graphic organizer (which opens...

Put together an English language arts unit on the six traits of writing with this helpful collection of resources. From fun songs to differentiated writing exercises reinforcing each of the traits, great ideas are provided for...

What is your dream for a better world? After reading a short article about Dr Martin Luther King, kids identify something they would like to see changed, the steps that could be followed to make the dream a reality, and the effects these...

Water is the source of life. It appears in poetry in both peaceful and torrential descriptions; it appears in earth science in its liquid, gaseous, and solid states. Combine these interpretations of our planet's most precious and...

Whether preparing your second graders for an expository writing proficiency assessment or just planning on introducing the writing process, this 37-page packet is for you. The unit has everything you need from scripted lessons to...

Looking for suggestions on how to organize a creating writing workshop? For topic suggestions appropriate for various grade levels? Check out a resource packet, designed for English language arts instructors, that is packed with ideas...

Third graders use a variety of resources to do research on an animal. Their final project is a graphic organizer for display and an informative multimedia slide show.

Compare and contrast two topics with your class. They will pick a topic of their choosing, create color-coded Venn diagram to visually organize their information, share diagrams with classmates, and write well-organized essay on...

Students investigate Native American culture by researching the Internet.  For this U.S. History lesson, students read online field reports about exploration and the history of Native Americans in the United States.  Students...