[Free Registration/Login Required] Students read about how the telephone, calculator, television, and clock have changed since they were invented. A question sheet is available to help students build skills in comparing and contrasting.

[Free Registration/Login Required] An informational text showing how pumpkins grow. A question sheet is available to help students build skills in reading comprehension.

Students will read an article by Byron Loosle on the meaning of Native American symbols and compare that to a video clip of an actual Native American explaining the symbols. There is a difference of opinion and students will weigh both...

[Free Registration/Login Required] This website provides a series of three lesson plans designed to teach students to use visual, meaning, and structure clues separately and together to determine the meaning of unknown words. Lessons are...

[Free Registration/Login Required] Teachers will read "Digging Up Dinosaurs" using the close reading technique. Students will use graphic organizers to summarize the steps necessary to collect, study, and build a dinosaur skeleton.

[Free Registration/Login Required] A lesson using the book Long Ago and Today by Rozanne Lanczak Williamsin in which young scholars learn to recognize similarities and differences within a text. Ideas for teaching, guided practice, and...

[Free Registration/Login Required] Use Animal Taste by Kirsten Hall to teach students to find explicit information inside informational texts. Includes ideas for teaching, guided practice, and independent practice. Although the book is...

[Free Registration/Login Required] Lesson uses Amazing Tigers! by Sarah L. Thomson and Ladybugs by Monica Hughes to teach students to use titles, pictures, and text to identify the main idea of an informational text. Ideas for direct...

[Free Registration/Login Required] A series of three lesson plans designed to teach students to identify author's purpose including to entertain, to inform, and to persuade. Lessons are based on the books The Adventures of Taxi Dog by...

Learn the significance of questioning in the classroom to teach students how to question the text in order to better understand what they are reading.

[Free Registration/Login Required] Lesson uses Amazing Gorillas! by Sarah L. Thomson and In the Wild: Leopards by Stephanie St. Pierreto to teach students how to use textual details to create a title for informational text. Ideas for...

This slideshow focuses on the impact of rhetorical devices and how they impact text. It explains eight common rhetorical devices: anaphora, asyndeton, chiasmus, direct address, hyperbaton, parallelism, polysyndeton, and rhetorical...

This graphic organizer can be use with students when they read an informational text. Using a Venn diagram to organize content, students will write important similarities and differences after reading an informational text and analyzing...

Students will complete a double bubble thinking map by sorting facts that go with Washington, Lincoln or both. Also included in this plan is an art project, worksheets, and video of the lesson in action. Great activity to use after...

From Just-Right Reading Response Activity Sheets for Young Learners, this graphic organizer can be used when students read informational texts. As responses to nonfiction, students will write the following on each notepad response:...

Students will practice comparing and contrasting a firsthand and secondhand account of the same event or topic.

This landing page offers different lessons related to the standard RL.1.1 Ask and answer questions about key details in a text.

This video tutorial features the character named Bobby who will assist students as they search for key details in a nonfiction text.

This site offers links to several lesson plans for teaching main ideas to first and second graders; it also provides and explains some activities for teaching the main idea to first graders.

Students will compare information from the non-fiction book "We are Americans" and the book "Whoever You Are" to write or speak more knowledgeably about what large groups of people have in common.

A lesson plan in which students read a text and stop periodically to write questions based on question word cards. Materials are included.

A lesson plan in which students use graphic organizers to compare and contrast topics within a text. Materials are included.

A lesson plan in which students read a text and highlight the most important details. Materials are included. [PDF]

A lesson plan in which students read a text and write main ideas and supporting details in boxes on a graphic organizer. Materials are included. [PDF]