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Curated OER
Use Your Imagination: Reading to Learn
Students examine the process of visualization as a means of comprehending what happens in a story. They read a chapter in a novel, visualize what happened in their mind and then draw a picture of what they visualized. They write two...
Curated OER
Writing A Summary
Middle schoolers read short stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and write summaries. In this summary writing lesson, pupils discuss how to write a summary. Middle schoolers then select a topic and practice writing using skills discussed.
Curated OER
It's Time to Sum It Up!!!
Students practice the reading strategy of summarization skills by picking out main events or ideas while reading a chapter in a book. They interact with the article, "SuperCroc," from National Geographic for Kids magazine to summarize...
Curated OER
Summing It All Up
Students summarize a selected piece of text nonfiction text. After reviewing the correct way to read silently, students read a nonfiction article. They write a summary paragraph using a concept map and the process outlined by the...
Curated OER
Removing the 'Junky' Words
Middle schoolers explore was to comprehend a story through summarization. They are introduced to a lesson plan by explaining that when we read there are a lot of extra, unnecessary, junk words. Students explore ways not pay to...
Curated OER
What Happened Next?
Fifth graders read one short story on their own. After reading, they are given a series of sentences and events from the short story and put them into the correct sequence. To end the lesson, they draw pictures from the story and...
Curated OER
Farm Animal Stick Puppets
Students summarize a children's book relating to farm animals. They act out the events of the book with stick puppets they create. Students experience the concepts of dialogue and role play.
Curated OER
Reliving History Through Slave Narratives
Students read slave narratives and retell the stories to the class, identifying sensory details. For this slavery lesson, students discuss the importance of sensory details, then read the slave narratives looking for specific examples. ...
Curated OER
Animal and Plant Habitats
Second graders write and illustrate a story. In this habitats instructional activity, 2nd graders learn about different types of plant and animal habitats. Students view video segments about habitats, answer comprehension questions,...
Curated OER
Keep It Short!
Students examine the process of summarizing text. They participate in a class discussion, and read an assigned passage from their textbook, highlighting the main points of the text. Students then write a short summary of their...
Curated OER
The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush
Third graders complete activities for the book The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush, by Tomie dePaola. In this literature lesson, the students read the story and summarize the main events. They look for story elements focusing on the...
Curated OER
Feeling Alone
Second graders listen to the story, The Whispering Cloth and discuss the message of the story. In this feeling alone lesson, 2nd graders make connections about what feeling alone means to them. Students define and interpret...
Curated OER
Introducing Literacy Elements in Nonfiction
Explore nonfiction writing with your class. They will identify elements in nonfiction by reviewing elements of fiction. Then they use biographies, memoirs, menus, Time for Kids, and text books to identify elements of nonfiction. They...
Maine Content Literacy Project
Introduction to Literacy Criticism
As learners continue to examine a short story of their choice, they take some time to look at analysis completed by others on the same story. In the eleventh lesson in a series of fourteen, pupils explore various sites for literary...
EngageNY
Grade 10 ELA Module 3: Unit 1, Lesson 1
Can people live forever? Scholars ponder the answer as they analyze an excerpt from The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. As readers discover Lacks' immortal cells, they discuss how the author carefully sequences, connects and unfolds...
National Endowment for the Humanities
Walt Whitman to Langston Hughes: Poems for a Democracy
Explore the idea of democratic poetry. Upper graders read Walt Whitman, examining daguerreotypes, and compare Whitman to Langston Hughes. They describe aspects of Whitman's I Hear America Singing to Langston Hughes' Let America Be...
Curated OER
To Tell You in a Nutshell
Students discuss the importance of comprehension and the use of summarization. Through guided practice, they follow six steps in finding and highlighting important information from an article, while deleting information that is not...
Curated OER
Ready, Set, Sum
Third graders summarize a piece of nonfiction text. After reviewing the correct way to read in order to summarize, 3rd graders independently read a nonfiction article. They write a summary paragraph using the three step process outlined...
Curated OER
Give Me the Facts!
Students study how to summarize a reading passage to improve their comprehension. They read a non-fiction passage and use five steps to summarize it while working in groups of three. Next, as class, they decide which group provided the...
Curated OER
Let's Sum It Up
Students summarize a selected piece of nonfiction text as a group. After reviewing the instructors preferred method for summarizing information by identifying the main idea and supporting details, groups write a summary paragraph of a...
Curated OER
Novel Study Night of the Twisters
For this reading worksheet, students use this graphic organizer to map the beginning, middle and end of The Night of the Twisters. Students use this "plot pie" to write a few sentences to summarize the story. The graphic organizer is...
Curated OER
My Guide to Summing It Up
Learners are broken into reading groups based on reading ability and rotate one group at a time reading with the teacher at a table. They discuss the function of the Table of Contents and find a story using it and predict what the story...
Curated OER
Reading Quilt/Main Idea
Sixth graders study main events in a story. In this reading comprehension lesson, 6th graders illustrate each event on a piece of paper with a quotation from the book and a summary of the event to represent the caption of...
Curated OER
Identifying and Describing Story Elements
First graders examine how to identify the different elements of a story and how they fit in a definite sequence. The use of comprehension skills is essential to retell the story as desired within the lesson.