Better Lesson
Better Lesson: Audience, Tone, and Style in Informative Text
Students will read samples of informative writing and highlight examples of how tone and style are used by the authors. Students will then apply this knowledge by writing their own informative text. Multiple examples of student work and...
Better Lesson
Better Lesson: A Storm of Ideas
The first step in writing an informational text on the topic of learners' choice is helping the student choose a topic of interest. Students will brainstorm ideas that will be possible final topics.
Better Lesson
Better Lesson: Writing an Opinion Based on Facts From a Text
Students will plan a paragraph that states their opinion and cites evidence to justify their opinion about an informational text. This lesson uses biographies since students can easily be able to write down factual information from the...
PBS
Pbs Teachers: Story Writing With Arthur
This series of 12 downloadable activities teach students some basics of story writing, using books or videos from the PBS "Arthur" series as a springboard. Activities include creating story maps, asking questions about characters and...
Better Lesson
Better Lesson: Revise and Revisit: Butterflies
Students will take a previously created paragraph and edit it to make it better by adding details, definitions, a topic sentence, or a closure to an informational paragraph. Resources include a PowerPoint presentation and pictures and...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Metamorphosis Stories of Change
The goal of this activity is for students to learn how to tell a story in order to make a complex topic (such as global warming or ozone holes) easier for a reader to grasp. Students realize that the narrative impulse underlies even...
Reading Rockets
Reading Rockets: Reading 101: A Guide to Teaching Reading and Writing
Reading 101 is a self-paced professional development course for K-3 teachers. It presents some of the core information that teachers need to help young children learn to read and write well and to support the children who struggle. The...
Daily Teaching Tools
Daily Teaching Tools: Independent Author Study Evaluation
This Daily Teaching Tools resource provides an author study evaluation rubric. Students will be assessed on oral communication skills, author information, and a Venn Diagram.
Writing Fix
Writing Fix: If You Give a Student an Animal
For this lesson plan, the book If You Give a Moose a Muffin, written by Laura Numeroff, is used as a mentor text for word choice. The content focus of the lesson is to teach the students to take ownership of scientific and descriptive...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: A Magnetic Personality
Students learn about magnets and how they are formed. They investigate the properties of magnets and how engineers use magnets in technology. Specifically, students learn about magnetic memory storage, which is the reading and writing of...
Ohio State University
Osu History Teaching Institute: Homestead Act of 1862
Through the use of primary sources, 4th graders will understand the main concepts of the Homestead Act and use that information to write a letter to a relative explaining why they moved to Ohio.
Other
Multimedia Schools: Moving Every Child Ahead the Big6
This article looks at applying the Big6 process to issues raised by No Child Left Behind legislation. The goal of the Big6 process is to improve performance by improving thinking through application of information technology skills. This...
Other
Ten Rhetoric of War Writing Projects
Created by a teacher responding to the events in Kosovo, this list is a great start for a media literacy class project. Good discussion-starting questions are included with each item on the list. Requires some independent research to...
Better Lesson
Better Lesson: Ew, Gross!
In this lesson, young scholars will be able to gather information from provided resources to answer a question. Using the book "Owls", the teacher will read the book while asking guiding questions. After the book, the students will have...
Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway: Use Outlines, Notetaking, Graphic Organizers, Lists
A learning module that teaches students about organizing information for an essay in four mini-lessons: Introduction, Taking Good Notes, Using Graphic Organizers, and Making Lists.
Better Lesson
Better Lesson: Accountable Talk Introduction
Learning to engage in collaborative conversations allows children to learn about their world, to become familiar with words, and to build a solid foundation for the development of reading and writing skills. This lesson plan will model...
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Houghton Mifflin Books: Zathura by Chris Van Allsburg
This comprehensive teacher's guide for the book "Zathura" by Chris Van Allsburg provides us with an opportunity to examine how writers blend scientific information with a fictional story.
ReadWriteThink
Read Write Think: Introducing Each Other: Interviews, Memoirs, Photos, Internet
This lesson plan is designed to teach various methods middle schoolers can use when researching background information on one another in order to introduce each other in written and oral form.
iCivics
I Civics: Curriculum Units
A large collection of Social Studies units, WebQuests, and games that focuses on teaching students how government works and the importance of being responsible, informed American citizens. Units are linked to state standards. A teacher...
Enchanted Learning
Enchanted Learning: President Barack Obama
Activities and an easy to read biography on President Barack Obama for the elementary student. With printable activity pages; including cloze activities, synonym sheets, essay topics and more! Also includes links to information on the...
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Composing Songs and Verse About Fraud
Students write a song, rap, or poem that warns people about identity theft and types of fraud. Includes teaching guide and student worksheet that can be filled in on a computer.
Read Works
Read Works: Grade 2: Three Lesson Unit: Main Idea
[Free Registration/Login Required] A series of three lesson plans designed to teach young scholars to identify main ideas through headings and chapter titles, and then to write appropriate titles of their own. Lessons are based on the...
Other
Research Project Guide: A Handbook for Teachers and Students
This resource provides guided research teaching units for all levels of learners.
National Endowment for the Humanities
Neh: Edsit Ement: Poems of Tennyson and Noyes: Pictures in Words
This is a great and informative site. This lesson uses Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade" and Noyes's "The Highwayman" to teach vivid imagery and figurative language. Don't miss out.