By fourth grade, most students are familiar with story elements such as setting, characters, and plot. In this lesson, students will compare and contrast the elements in two stories with similar themes.

Good readers analyze texts by looking at similarities and differences. Use this lesson to teach your students to compare and contrast the story elements of two fiction texts.

Students will read a short fictional story and discuss why the author included certain details and words. Use this lesson to help your students navigate parts of fictional text to determine the author's purpose!

This lesson will help your students use sentence level context clues to decode challenging words in a nonfiction text. Students will enjoy learning about maps and figuring out tricky words along the way!

Getting hooked on a series or type of character creates reader engagement! Use this lesson to challenge your students to compare and contrast fictional texts as they find the joy in reading books by the same author.

Improve your students' comprehension of non-fictional reading through this lesson that teaches them about text features. Students will find their own text features and explain why they aid in the reading process.

Roll up your sleeves and get out the magnifying glasses! In this lesson, your students will practice finding supportive details and examples in informational texts.

Bring theme to life with Chris Van Allsburg's The Sweetest Fig, a story with a great message for young readers to discover. This lesson pairs a wonderful read-aloud with activities and fun videos to keep your students engaged.

Students will learn how to identify story elements and create a short and sweet summary. They will fill out a graphic organizer and solidify their understanding by creating illustrations to show major plot points that they find themselves!

Look at history! In this lesson, guide students through an exploration of the context, causes, and effects of the Transcontinental Railroad, and help them practice identifying the main idea and supporting details in a nonfiction text.

Give students many opportunities to see how visuals can influence a story's meaning. Show off your acting skills and read a great book to help them learn!

Students will have a blast turning a reading passage into a Reader's Theater skit. This lesson teaches them to use dialogue to help readers understand the experiences of different characters.

Are the stories the same or different? You decide! Use this lesson with your students to practice comparing the story elements in two fictional stories written by the same author.

Your students will learn academic vocabulary and use a graphic organizer to compare and contrast two short stories. Use this as a stand-alone lesson or as an introduction to the Comparing and Contrasting Short Stories lesson plan.

Help your students absorb the details of a text and make inferences about what they read with the strategy of close reading. By reading closely, students will become better able to understand complex themes and nuances in a text.

This lesson will help students identify the author's point of view and purpose for writing an informational text.

Encourage your students to translate their understanding of theme to poetry. In this lesson, students will evaluate the theme of poems by sketching pictures and citing text evidence.

This lesson will provide your ELs with support as they learn about nouns and practice retelling a story with a 5 W's graphic organizer. This lesson can be used as a stand alone activity or a support lesson.

Teach your students about picture walks as a strategy to understand the author's purpose in a fictional text. This lesson can be used as a stand-alone lesson or as support for the Examining Author's Purpose in a Fictional Text lesson.

ELs will get a chance to practice their listening and reading comprehension skills as they answer questions about the key details in a read-aloud text. Use as a stand-alone or pre-lesson for the Questions for Comprehension lesson plan.

Use this lesson to help your ELs learn key vocabulary terms that they will see in future lessons about the American Revolution. It can be a stand-alone lesson or used as support to the lesson A Living Timeline: The American Revolution.

This lesson gives students practice identifying first person and third person narration in fiction and nonfiction texts. It could be taught as a stand-alone lesson or as a precursor to the lesson Fiction vs. Nonfiction.

This lesson will help your students summarize short stories and describe how characters respond to challenges using a story map. Use this lesson as a stand-alone activity or a support lesson for the Story Mapping Group Work lesson plan.