Newseum
Editorials and Opinion Articles
Reading the news is fun, and that's a fact! With the lesson plan, scholars differentiate between fact and opinion as they read editorial articles. They complete a worksheet to analyze the information before writing their own editorials...
Curated OER
Writing Summaries
Practice summary writing with informational texts. Young readers create summaries after reading magazine articles, newspaper articles, or other forms of informational texts. Readers use the GRASP strategy (read text, write what you...
Curated OER
Magazine Production
Analyze magazines as a class, looking carefully for the target audience, advertisements, and topics presented. Small groups then work as a publication team and receive a magazine that they have to "sell." Each individual has a different...
Curated OER
Reading For Information
To help learners better comprehend informational texts, they work through a series of activities. They discuss strategies, make predictions, skim passages, focus on key words, and practice taking notes. This activity focuses on what to...
Curated OER
Eastside Literacy Reading Lesson - Fact or Opinion
Analyze critical thinking skills that involve the ability to distinguish between fact and opinion through self-reflection. Higher education students will collect a newspaper article, advertisement, magazine article, tabloid article,...
National Math + Science Initative
Reading an Informational Text: "It All Started with Sputnik"
Sputnik was one of the greatest scientific advancements of the 1950s, and this reading lesson plan does it justice. Pupils start off with pre-reading questions and a video. They then read an excerpt from an article, which is accompanied...
British Council
Rich!
Let's take a trip to the future. Scholars imagine their future wealthy selves by completing a worksheet based on the year 2025. Then, acting as journalists, they conduct interviews with their classmates to prepare to write an article for...
For the Teachers
Fact vs. Opinion
Many informational texts are written as factual, but can your learners determine when an opinion is presented as fact? Have your kids read several articles on the same topic and record the statements that contain either facts or...
Curated OER
Natural Inquirer Ecosystem Article Lesson
Students discover new ways to preserve the ecosystem by completing graphic organizers. In this environmental activity, students read an article from the Natural Inquirer in small groups and fill out a graphic organizer based on the...
ReadWriteThink
Critical Media Literacy: Commercial Advertising
Commercial advertising—we can't get away from it, but do we realize just how often we are being advertised to? With this lesson, scholars analyze mass media to identify how its techniques influence our daily lives. Learners browse...
Curated OER
Don't Believe the Hype
Are hand sanitizers good for you? What about the environment? Research the science behind commonly used cold medicines. The class reads an article, creates a product poster, and conducts independent research on product claims made by...
Curated OER
Read All About It! California History of the 30s and 40s
Explore the Great Depression! Discover the challenges people experienced during the time period. Learners investigate photographs from the Dust Bowl and WWII era and create a story line about the photographs, writing a newspaper article...
Curated OER
Fears and Phobias
Take the fear out of reading with this series of three lessons from HotWire Magazine about fears and phobias. Each lesson contains pre-reading and post-reading activities aimed at improving learners' reading comprehension skills with the...
Curated OER
Fact Or Opinion
Groups of junior highers find newspaper articles which contain both facts and opinions, and present examples of each to the class. The focus is on discerning between fact and opinion. Two excellent worksheets are embedded in the plan...
National Geographic
Rescuing, Relocating, and Rehabilitating Wildlife
Bring up the Deepwater Horizon (BP) oil spill that occurred in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Display the colorful diagram of the coastal and marine organisms living in the area. Show a video about relocating the eggs of the Gulf's sea...
Curated OER
How to Write a Biography
Looking for a great lesson on how to write a biography? Here, middle schoolers draw from magazine articles, novels, historical figures, and current events to choose a person, or character to write about in a biography. They follow a...
Curated OER
Briefly Noted: Practicing Useful Annotation Strategies
Post-It notes, highlighting, underlining. Sam Anderson’s New York Times Magazine article, “What I Really Want Is Someone Rolling Around in the Text,” launches a study of “marginalia,” or writing thoughts in the margins of a text. After...
Curated OER
Now That's Beautiful!
Your class experiences dozens of messages about beauty every day by reading magazines, watching movies, and listening to the radio. Have them analyze society's view of beauty in groups after discussing several resources, including Dove's...
Pearson Longman
Back Talk: A Summarizing Activity
Here's resource that presents step-by-step directions for three different activities that ask kids to read a short passage, listen for the main points, and then to summarize the passage in their own words.
Scholastic
Outlining Main Ideas and Details
Practice outlining and evaluating expository writing in this instructional activity. After discussing main ideas and seeing examples, young writers go through a sample outline and discuss the way to properly format a piece of writing....
Nemours KidsHealth
Media Literacy and Health: Grades 9-12
An essential skill for 21st-century learners is to know how to find reliable sources of information. Two activities help high schoolers learn how to determine the reliability of health-related news from websites, TV, magazines, or...
Curated OER
Oxford Compiles Top 10 Irritating Phrases
Explore well-known expressions that are frequently used. Middle schoolers read an article with the author's opinion of the most annoying phrases. Afterward, they complete numerous activities that check their reading comprehension. Some...
Curated OER
Responsible Youth in the News
Students research newspapers and magazines for articles about young people being responsible or being irresponsible. In this responsibility instructional activity, students discuss responsibility and the articles. Students answer...
Curated OER
Magazine Dollars and Sense
Young scholars analyze magazine advertisements that appeal to them. They explore how tobacco companies continue to target teens in magazine advertisements. They explore how advertisers select magazine ad space.