Young readers test their comprehension skills with an interactive practice. Pupils read a brief informational text about money then answer five questions. A detailed page appears at the end to showcase participants' work.

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,...

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.

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...

[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...

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...

In this tutorial, you'll learn about the copyright protections that apply to work posted online, including images, text, videos, and more. You'll also learn about the rules that determine which of these resources you can use, and how you...

This lesson is a great small group reading lesson that has a social studies connection. In this lesson, students will be comparing and contrasting schools from long ago and schools of today using informational texts. Included are...

Learn how to use context clues to help you define precise vocabulary words that you may not know.

For 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...

In this instructional activity, 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 instructional activity in action,...

A short explanation of how to use explicit details in an informational text to make inferences. Click on Model at the bottom right to see a model with examples.

Here's a project where you can try your hand at being a detective with your computer. In this project you'll write a program to do some basic analysis of features of written text (for example, counting the length of each word in the...

Compare the printed page to an electronic web page and use this activity to discuss the similarities and differences. A cross-curricular tie-in with ecosystems. Could easily be adapted to another subject area.

This instructional activity uses graphic organizers to engage students in reading comprehension strategies for informational text in science. Venn Diagram, Hierarchy, Time Line, Cluster Diagram, and Flow Chart reproducible pages are...

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.

In an expository essay, a type of informational text, the writer clarifies or explains something by using facts, details, and examples in a clear and concise way. To write an effective expository essay, students need a basic...

Use this Field Guide to Birds from the PBS Kids series Molly of Denali to identify and learn more about birds in your neighborhood. Then seek out additional information and create your own pages to add to Molly's guide.

In this lesson, students will explore ways authors use text structures to convey meaning through cause and effect, sequencing, comparison, and more.

Extensive information on how to use the American Psychological Association (APA) format for citations. Information is provided on general format, referring to other works, reference list, notes, and examples in the APA format. W.9-10.8...

Using this comprehensive lesson plan, learners will use a web graphic organizer to learn to record the main idea and details learned from informational text read aloud to them.

[Free Registration/Login Required] Students will analyze tourism brochures to determine features related to nonfiction writing in this unit. Tourism websites may be used in lieu of the brochures. Cotswold and the North Leigh Roman Villa...

[Free Registration/Login Required] A site with links to 30 worksheets that can be downloaded and printed for student use while building skills with standard W.3.2.B: Develop the topic with facts, definitions, and details.

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...