You’ve probably heard of carnivorous animals, but have you heard of carnivorous plants? Use this lesson to teach your students about carnivorous plants by having them research characteristics and create a presentation.

If young writers can learn how to write a solid paragraph, then they have the building blocks of an essay. In this lesson, students will study paragraph structure and practice organizing ideas into paragraphs.

Do your students have strong opinions? This lesson, which features a bunch of fun essay-building exercises, provides an outlet for young writers to express their opinions.

This lesson will help students map out their argument essay after they have identified a topic. Students will learn the three basic components of constructing an argument: stating a claim, listing reasons, and providing evidence.

Help your students learn how to move smoothly between ideas and paragraphs using transition words and phrases. Young writers will use real texts as mentors as they study how authors use words to transition between ideas and support their claims. As a result, they will have a word bank to use in their own writing.

Young writers will learn to manipulate and combine sentences with conjunctions and adverb phrases. This skill helps students understand that crafting sentences is a creative and artistic process.

Support your EL students in understanding and identifying the main idea and supporting details in a nonfiction text. This can support the lesson Tip of the Iceberg: Nonfiction Summary Details.