Children can learn to analyze expository or informational texts at nearly any age. This scaffolded and scripted resource provides teachers with the support needed to facilitate a thoughtful lesson on summarizing informational text...

Mirroring Jerry Spinelli's style in Wringer, chapter 5, pupils use the "counting up/down technique" to recall an important moment in their lives. In the book, the character is being punched, and between blows he remembers details...

With the help of a prewriting activity, scholars reserach a topic and compose an expository essay to show what they know about a topic of their choice. 

Provide your essay writers with a sample essay outline. Richly detailed, this two-page handout not only describes the necessary parts of an outline, but also explains the purpose of each section. A model outline is also included.

How confident are your readers in responding to short reading passages? Find out with a worksheet that reinforces reading comprehension skills and requires self reflection on one's ability to read and answer questions...

The end of the year has arrived, which means it's time to find out what your third graders have learned with this practice Common Core assessment. Presented with one narrative and one expository reading passage, young learners...

The end of the year has arrived, which means it's time to find out exactly what your fifth graders have learned over the past few months. With the help of this Common Core-designed assessment that includes two narrative passages and...

With the end of the year quickly approaching it's time to find out exactly how much your sixth graders have learned. Specifically designed for the Common Core ELA standards, this practice test gives students five reading passages,...

Keep an eye on the growth of your sixth graders' reading and writing skills with the help of this practice Common Core assessment. Working their way through the six included fiction and nonfiction reading passages, learners answer a...

Everyone has a different point of view, even when it comes to the enormity of the universe. Two separate text passages explain the scope of a galaxy, prompting young readers to write an essay about each author's argument and how the...

Middle schoolers read and review informational texts, analyze cause and effect, and distinguish fact from opinion. They assess a "one-minute mystery" you read aloud for cause and effect relationships. Resource includes complete set of...

Students examine articles from a number of sources to determine their main ideas and details, and discuss them as a class. Using a worksheet, they practice outlining a report after watching a teacher demonstration of the outlining...

Third graders identify story elements. In this story elements lesson, 3rd graders look at main idea, characters, point of view, theme and setting. They create a five paneled comic strip from a book.

Use comic strips to teach sequencing in narrative poetry. As homework, each class member selects a comic strip with 4-8 frames, cuts the frames apart, places the pieces in an envelope, and brings the envelope to class. Class members swap...

The power of a single person to change a community is amazing. Read about about how Jane Addams witnessed people living terrible lives in Chicago and chose to do everything she could to help them. When finished, young learners identify...

Sixth graders use short reading passages to identify, explain, and discuss the author's purpose for writing. After a lecture/demo, they utilize a graphic organizer embedded in this plan to organize their writing ideas.

Here is a great way to explore narrative writing! Learners review a previously constructed story map and identify the characters, setting, and main events in the book Anansi and the Moss-Covered Rock retold by Eric A. Kimmel. They...

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...

Young scholars read Arthur's Pet Business and  complete a pre-writing worksheet for expository writing.  For this paragraph writing lesson, students gather and organize material for a paragraph about pets.

Through direct instruction, the teacher demonstrates how to identify the main idea and supporting details of a text when creating a summary. As a class, read a paragraph, highlighting relevant information and crossing out extraneous...

How does Shakespeare develop the central idea of agency versus fate in Macbeth? Using the resource, pupils work in small groups to discuss the plot of Act 3.1. Next, they complete a brief writing assignment to analyze how the main idea...

Learners explore how the human brain changes over time, comparing an interactive web page about brain development to a text-only version. Additionally, pupils continue reading an article about teen decision making, analyzing the main...

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...

Each presidential election year, the debate about the electoral college rages. Michael C. Maibach's "A Defense of the Electoral College" offers young political scientists an opportunity to examine a reasoned argument for why the...