What would a main idea be without important details? Readers use a graphic organizer to record key details from an informational text (a fiction text would also work). Review main idea as a concept before beginning, asking scholars...

The sixth lesson plan in this Bullfrog at Magnolia Circle unit assesses your third graders' ability to read and understand informational text. The included assessment asks learners to take notes about the main idea and supporting...

Readers identify main ideas and supporting details using informational texts. For this literacy lesson, they make predictions and read the text to find the main ideas. They use a table diagram to define the main idea and supporting...

As your class reaches the end of the book Bullfrog at Magnolia Circle, the seventh lesson in this literary unit helps third graders transition from reading narrative to expository writing. Scholars develop their note-taking skills...

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...

Piece by piece ... Scholars read the text World without Fish by breaking the text into pieces. They identify challenging words and determine the gist of each section as they read. They then work together in triads to answer...

As part of a group of lessons, your class will return to the primary text for this unit, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Key vocabulary as well as close reading strategies continue to be the focus skills; however, this lesson...

Trading in Colonial America is the focus of a lesson plan that boosts reading skills. As a class, scholars examine the informational text for crucial details, use their newfound knowledge to share information with their peers, and write...

Make a study of the First Amendment and its relationship to freedom. Pupils rewrite the amendment and discuss the central idea before focusing on a specific phrase. After discussing, class members write a journal entry about the included...

Help scholars comprehend a challenging text. Using the resource, pupils read excerpts from an article about the digital revolution and adolescent brain development. As they read, they answer text-dependent questions and complete a close...

Scholars boost their knowledge of the Civil Rights Movement with a lesson that challenges writers, readers, and historians to analyze primary sources and caption their observations. By way of reading, writing, discussion, independently,...

As your 3rd grade class finishes reading Bullfrog at Magnolia Circle, the eighth lesson plan of this unit helps readers from an understanding of the very specific information on the final page of the book. As with the entire unit,...

A read-aloud anthology focuses on colonial towns and townspeople. Over three weeks, young scholars listen to stories, participate in discussions about town life, practice word work, and complete an extension activity with each...

Begin this expository writing activity by reading a non-fiction book of your choice and modeling expository writing. The plan suggests The Trip of a Drip by Vicki Cobb but notes that other texts will work. Learners then choose a...

Although this is part of a series, lesson plan nine has your class take a break from their close study of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) text to read the firsthand account “Teaching Nepalis to Read, Plant, and...

Lesson 10 in a series of human rights lessons focuses on the skills of finding evidence and summarizing. Your young readers work to compare the two texts they have read in this unit: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights...

Lesson 6 of this extensive unit finally has your class begin to work their way through specific articles from the text of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Before examining the rights actually detailed in the...

A continuation of the previous lesson, which is part of a larger group of lessons on human rights (see additional materials). Here, in Lesson 7, your class will explore more articles from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. After...

Explore how lack of access to water impacts peoples' lives in poor countries. Through text reading and discussion, middle schoolers are presented with the story of a young girl who lives and functions with limited water resources. They...

How do writers introduce and develop the central ideas in a text? To answer this question, ninth graders closely examine "The Age of Honey," the opening chapter in Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos' Sugar Changed the World: A Story of...

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.

Fourth graders identify the literary elements of a nonfiction text. In this literary elements lesson, 4th graders read the text Piano Starts Here--The Young Art Tatum and fill in a chart that includes the events from the book....

Your class continues to explore the history of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In addition to learning about the background of this text, learners work on the skill of identifying and understanding key academic vocabulary....

Scholars scour thematically aligned texts to gather a bank of words they can use in an original acrostic poem.