EngageNY
Drafting Individual Readers Theater Scripts for a Specific Scene: Rephrasing, Narrator Introduction, and Identifying Characters
Read, revise, refine! Scholars refine their readers theater scripts by rephrasing some of the lines. Next, they write drafts of their narrator introductions and share their work with peers to give and receive feedback.
Curated OER
Classifying Defending Information about Main Idea
Students read and highlight important information gathered from text. In this reading strategies lesson, students define classify and then classify the important information they find. Students share and reflect on their answers.
Melissa Institute for Violence Prevention and Treatment
Concept Muraling
Concept muraling helps learners improve their comprehension of a text by giving them a way to organize their understanding of the key concepts in that text. Introduce readers to this process with a carefully scaffolded instructional...
Curated OER
Getting to Know You
Fifth graders identify strategies to assist in choosing a book. For this book selection lesson, 5th graders discuss ways to determine if a book is the right reading level or on a topic of interest. Students preview several books and...
Pennsylvania Department of Education
Drawing Conclusions Based on Literary Elements
Students compare versions of Cinderella and draw conclusions based on the story elements identified. In this literacy comprehension and story elements lesson, students read several versions of Cinderella, complete a "Comparing Folklore"...
Curated OER
Strangers
Students learn and discuss what to do when approached by a stranger. In this stranger lesson plan, students answer questions based on a book that the teacher reads. They then participate in a discussion about rules and guidelines to...
Curated OER
The Hare and the Water: A Tanzanian Folk Tale
"The Hare and the Water," a Tanzanian folk tale, lends a global perspective to literary analysis. Learners spend the first two days reading and storyboarding. On day three, they examine folk tale elements (worksheet included), and design...
Curated OER
Cloze Instruction And Herringbone Technique
Students sort out important information and create a visual framework for reviewing in the future. They organize a large quantity of information thus helping with learning and remembering details, cause and effect, comparison and...
Curated OER
Paraphrasing and Summarizing
Read an article about the migration of our ancestors and write a paragraph. Pupils paraphrase and summarize to restate the information found in a nonfiction text. They write a shortened version of the reading to demonstrate the...
Curated OER
Build Mastery: Prediction
What do you think will happen? Use a graphic organizer to help learners predict what will happen in a text. Consider modeling the chart using a familiar story, pretending you don't know what happens. Show scholars the book, explaining...
Perkins School for the Blind
Wheel of Fortune Game
Games are great for practicing any number of basic skills. Here is a set of wonderful instructions for making a braille version of a spinning game, where children win points by correctly reading/identifying the high-frequency words the...
Curated OER
Predict and Clarify with The Old Woman & Her Pig
Primary readers predict and check for understanding by using comprehension strategies. Prepare readers the first day by frontloading vocabulary and using pictures to visualize the words. On the second day, read the story The Old Woman...
Novelinks
The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle: Writing Response
Prior to reading chapter 15 of the book, The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi, examine the painting, Shipwrecked by Edward Moran, and respond to the feelings that arise within and how it relates to the characters of the novel.
Curated OER
Map It Out
Explore how illustrations add to a story. Young learners will look at picture books to see how the pictures tell the story. They create illustrations to go with a chosen story, and then flip the activity so they have to write a story to...
Curated OER
Bridge to Terabithia
Students explore scenes from Katherine Paterson's book, Bridge to Terabithia. In this visualization activity, students listen to the story read aloud. The students then choose words and phrases that paint a picture in their heads....
Curated OER
Quilt Squares-Literature Reporting
Differentiate instruction with this crafty approach to demonstrating comprehension. Learners choose a fictional book at their reading level, and afterward create a quilt square. The square is "decorated" with words, illustrations, and...
Curated OER
Introduce: Cause and Effect
Introduce beginning readers to cause and effect in a story by exploring it together. Learners make predictions about a book based on its cover, title, and a brief flip through the pages. They listen to an explanation of cause and effect...
Curated OER
From the Middle Ages Straight to You
Students read a "letter" from Dr. Suess' Bartholomew Cubbins and note differences between their lives and Bartholomew's. They utilize prewriting strategies to draft a letter of response to Bartholomew.
Curated OER
Acting for the Common Goods
The first of a three-part series on bullying, this plan has class members present skits about bullying, write and sign an anti-bullying pledge, and complete a service project. For the skit, learners use information from previous lessons...
Curated OER
My Secret War: Lesson 5
Fifth graders determine how freedom comes with rights and responsibilities through literature and poetry about World War II. In this World War II lesson, 5th graders use the letters in the word "infamy" to write an acrostic poem. They...
Curated OER
Exploring Owls
What can young scientists discover from dissecting an owl pellet? Explore the owl food chain, beginning with an introduction to these predatory birds. Suggested strategies here include creating a podcast and purchasing a poster, however...
Curated OER
Researching the Past
Learners research the western movement in order to learn note taking strategies with nonfiction texts. They use the Internet to search for important information about the western movement using the Cornell Notes note-taking system. They...
Curated OER
Poetry and Visualization
Students use visualization techniques when reading poetry. In this visualization and poetry lesson, students work in groups to present a tableau that depicts a word from the poem as classmates guess the word. Students then read the...
Curated OER
Using Comic Strips to Teach the Use of Quotation Marks
Students identify when and why quotations are used. Using comic strips and speech bubbles, they read and discuss examples of quotation marks, and in pairs write text for a cartoon on a piece of paper using quotation marks around the...