Take Note

Improve class understanding of colonial times by reading an informational text and filling out the accompanying graphic organizer. Class members work with a partner to read, take notes, make inferences, and synthesize information.The...

Voices from the past. Young scholars listen to a podcast interview with a historical re-enactor as they continue their research in the eleventh lesson plan of this unit on colonial trade. Applying their close reading skills, learners...

What was life like in colonial America? Follow this instructional activity and your pupils will find out what people in colonial times did for work and for fun. Ask learners to compare and contrast the two texts and explain what the...

In the tenth instructional activity of this unit, young scholars learn to categorize information as they continue researching their colonial trade. During guided practice, the teacher models how to read informational text slowly while...

The twelfth instructional activity of this unit builds on the skills developed in the previous instructional activity, as fourth graders continue their quest to become experts on colonial trade by listening to interviews with historical...

Fourth graders tackle the close reading skill of learning how to find the main idea and details within informational text. A graphic organizer is provided to help learners navigate taking note-taking skills with the book, The Iroquois: A...

This second lesson in a larger unit is perfect for the beginning of the year because it explicitly teaches 3rd graders how to use close reading skills by identifying unfamiliar words, figuring out the gist, and defining important...

Building on the previous lesson in this unit on colonial trade, the ninth lesson has young experts continuing their research and writing summaries of the information they find. To begin, children participate in guided practice where they...

Fourth graders work in small groups to become experts on different colonial trades in the eighth lesson of this unit. Working toward the long-term goal of writing a piece of historical fiction, young scholars read informational texts and...

Readers learn how to categorize information with this simple exercise. First, they read a short passage about winter in the Northeast. They then organize the information into categories. The categories and a few examples for each are...