College Board
Evaluating Sources: How Credible Are They?
How can learners evaluate research sources for authority, accuracy, and credibility? By completing readings, discussions, and graphic organizers, scholars learn how to properly evaluate sources to find credible information. Additionally,...
Better Lesson
Better Lesson: Visual Representations in Informational Text
Students will look at examples of illustrations and diagrams in informational texts and discuss how each one helps enhance the text. Students gain the knowledge that sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words because a complex idea...
Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway: Determining Importance & Summarizing Informational Text
These teacher resources focuses on why it is important to teach elementary students to determine the importance and to summarize informational text. It leads an activity to help teachers experience when and how we use these strategies.
Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway: Using Features of Literary & Informational Text to Guide Reading
A learning module that teaches students about using text features to guide reading in three mini lessons: Engaging with Text, Literary Think-Aloud, and Informational Think-Aloud. Download a PDF with lesson plans and printable handouts...
Utah Education Network
Uen: Using a Before Reading Organizer With Informational Text
This module provides strategies to use with informational text. Teachers will explicitly teach students about graphic organizers to use before reading informtational texts.
Better Lesson
Better Lesson: Points of Informational Text Main Idea and Details
This lesson uses the book Explorers of North America - A True Book by Brendan January to teach students how to identify the main topic of a multi-paragraph informational text and specific paragraphs within the text. Students are guided...
Read Works
Read Works: Genre Studies: Informational Text Kindergarten Unit: Labeled Diagrams
[Free Registration/Login Required] Lesson uses Bats by Gail Gibbons to teach students how to identify facts learned from labeled diagrams within an informational text. Ideas for direct teaching, guided practice, and independent practice...
Reading Rockets
Reading Rockets: Teach Expository Text Structure to Facilitate Comprehension
Expository text can be challenging to young readers because of the unfamiliar concepts and vocabulary it presents. Discover ways to help your students analyze expository text structures and pull apart the text to uncover the main idea...
Better Lesson
Better Lesson: Text Feature Diagrams
At the end of this lesson, students will be able to identify and create diagrams associated with informational text. Included is a link to an eSpark video on diagrams, rules for group work, multiple examples of diagrams, and a...
US Department of Education
U.s. Dept. Of Education: Teaching Approaches: Text Comprehension Instruction
What is text comprehension? How does comprehension improve our reading ability? Check out this site to learn more about reading comprehension instruction. There are some wonderful suggestions for teachers to implement in their classrooms.
Better Lesson
Better Lesson: Similarities and Differences Between Two Text
In this lesson, through guided practice, the students use two texts about Martin Luther King to compare the similarities and differences between those texts. Includes videos of the lesson in action, printable charts, and a graphic...
Better Lesson
Better Lesson: Cities in Mesopotamia: Understanding a Complex Text
In this lesson, 6th graders use details from a nonfiction article to create a visual representation and then, from that visual, provide evidence that demonstrates their understanding of the text. Includes samples of student work and lots...
Better Lesson
Better Lesson: Comparing and Contrasting With "Then and Now"
This lesson plan is a great small group reading lesson plan that has a social studies connection. In this lesson plan, students will be comparing and contrasting schools from long ago and schools of today using informational texts....
CommonLit
Common Lit: Teaching Kids in Vietnam to Avoid a Deadly, Everyday Legacy of War
A learning module that begins with "Teaching Kids in Vietnam to Avoid a Deadly, Everyday Legacy of War" by Michael Sullivan, accompanied by guided reading questions, assessment questions, and discussion questions. The text can be printed...
Better Lesson
Better Lesson: W.3.2: Write Informative/explanatory Texts to Examine a Topic
Links to 56 lessons and activities that build student skills in standard W.3.2: Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas and information clearly.
ReadWriteThink
Read Write Think: Comprehending Nonfiction Text on the Web
Contains plans for three lessons designed to improve comprehension of nonfiction, especially nonfiction texts on the web. It focuses on identifying text features, locating specific information, and generalizing that information. In...
Better Lesson
Better Lesson: Learning About Subheadings and Bold Words
In this lesson, students will use several strategies to learn the meaning of new words they encounter in text. The students will learn specific strategies so when they encounter new words, they can figure out the meaning of those words...
AdLit
Ad lit.org: Multiple Texts: Multiple Opportunities for Teaching and Learning
Engaging all students in a themed study or unit is a challenge that teachers can resolve by using materials that match students' independent or instructional reading levels (Robb 1994, 2000). When students face textbooks that are above...
ReadWriteThink
Read Write Think: Creative Writing Through Wordless Picture Books
Need help planning ways to creatively teach your students chronological order? Here's a great place to start. While the site is specifically geared toward the middle school student, it is a teaching idea which could easily be adapted for...
ReadWriteThink
Read Write Think: Draw a Story: Stepping From Pictures to Writing
Help young students move from drawing pictures into writing simple stories. Good plan for having students put pictures in sequential order and teaching them about sequential order.
Better Lesson
Better Lesson: Using the Five Finger Rule
Students identify text features in nonfiction, as they continue to study cells' function as building blocks of organisms, and summarize the requirements for cells to live.
University of California
Regents of the University of California: Using the Cognates Strategy
This strategy guide introduces an approach for making students aware of cognates (words that have a similar spelling, pronunciation, and meaning across languages) in content-area texts. This guide includes an introductory section about...
Read Works
Read Works: Genre Studies: Biography Kindergarten Unit: Important Person
[Free Registration/Login Required] Lesson uses A Picture Book of George Washington by David A. Adler to teach students what biography is and why the subjects of biographies are important people. Ideas for direct teaching, guided...
Better Lesson
Better Lesson: A "How To" Lesson for the Gingerbread Loose in the School
Learning to follow directions is an essential skill needed for success in school as well as in life. Through participation in this lesson, kindergartners will learn the importance of following directions in a specified sequence. Included...