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.

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.

Help your students become shining stars with this lesson about metaphors. Your class will hone art skills and practice comparison using figurative language.

Change is inevitable, even for story characters! In this lesson, your students will determine how a character changes throughout a story by focusing on the character’s dialogue and actions.

St. Patrick's Day is a widely popular holiday all over the world. Teach your students about some interesting traditions as they write an informative text about how St. Patrick's Day is celebrated.

Who doesn’t love learning about animals? Engage students in research as they write informational books about animals.

Fully adaptable, this lesson can be used to to highlight African American leaders, famous women, veterans, or any other group of individuals who have acted heroically and have positively influenced our nation!

Use this lesson to help your ELs strengthen their vocabulary and learn how to create a personal timeline. Teach this lesson as a standalone lesson or use it as support for the lesson Timelines and Nonfiction Text.

Making mistakes helps us learn! Your students will flex their analytical muscles to pinpoint errors in multiplication problems using arrays. Use the lesson on its own or as support to Base Ten Arrays for Multi-Digit Multiplication.

Every great reader and writer knows that syntax matters. During this lesson, students will use the close reading strategy to focus on word choice, and use their understanding of syntax to develop theories about patterns in the text.

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.

Understanding the big idea of a nonfiction text and being able to write a succinct summary are key fourth grade skills. This lesson focuses on summarizing a nonfiction passage in 3-4 sentences.

This lesson combines an introduction to biomes with some fun Venn diagram exercises. Not only will students learn more about nature, they'll also learn how to make comparisons between different things in nature.

Use this lesson to help your ELs understand main idea and supporting details. They'll analyze non-fiction word, sentence, and paragraph structures. It can be a stand-alone lesson or a support lesson to the In Search of Main Ideas lesson.

Students will develop pre-writing confidence by learning how to approach unfamiliar opinion writing prompts. Writers will generate a topic sentence and flush out supporting information.