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.

Are your students hooking their readers? Use this creative and imaginative writing exercise that will bring student beginnings to life.

Second grade students will step into the author’s shoes as they hunt for evidence to determine what a nonfiction author’s purpose might be.

Popular fiction throughout the ages colors the way people speak. In this short lesson, students will read a myth and non-fiction paragraph in order to identify and define words that come from mythology.

Nourish your child's inner writer with this lesson on three different forms of literature: poetry, prose, and drama. After going through some examples of each, students will demonstrate their knowledge by filling out bubble maps.

This is a great lesson plan to introduce your EL students to the use of illustrations in a story. This can be a stand-alone lesson or used as support to the lesson What's in a Picture?

"You must be nice to him, Wendy impressed on her brothers." In this lesson, your class continues work in their Peter Pan and Neverland workbooks, focusing on comprehension of Wendy Darling's personality.

Write right with homophones! This interactive lesson will help students with their understanding of homophones by differentiating homophones through motion and how they are used in sentences.

Combine letter recognition and movement with this reading-focused lesson! In this lesson, students will reenact the story "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" while learning to recognize lowercase letters.

Get students curious about reading with these activities designed to support comprehension. This lesson plan can be used alone or with the Main Ideas and Details lesson plan.

This engaging lesson teaches students about the famous author Faith Ringgold. Students will explore two pieces of literature, comparing and contrasting story elements, then write opinion pieces to illustrate which book they liked best.

Are your students emerging readers? Use this literacy-focused lesson plan to set summer reading goals and help your students express their opinions about books. Can be used as a stand-alone or support lesson for the Summer Reads lesson plan.

This lesson plan can be used as a stand alone or support lesson for Reading Winners to introduce or review concepts of print and parts of a book to your ELs.

Bram Stoker's Dracula has inspired feelings of fear and morbid curiosity for over a century. With this lesson plan, your students will get a taste of the literary work while learning about the myth behind vampires.

Use this fun theatrical lesson plan to review or teach all about retelling a story with your ELs. This can be used as a stand-alone lesson or as support to the lesson Goldilocks and the Beginning, Middle, and End.

In this literary lesson, students use fairy tales to practice identifying character traits. Students are challenged to justify their reasoning using text based support.

Students will use their understanding of plot, theme, and comparing and contrasting in this lesson that teaches about an award-winning African American author, Jacqueline Woodson. Students will read some of her fiction books and compare and contrast the stories. They'll also discuss what they think makes Jacqueline Woodson an award-winning author.

This lesson focuses on how punctuation affects reading fluency and comprehension using graphic organizers and sentence stems. Use this lesson as a stand-alone activity or a support for the Punctuation and Prosody lesson plan.

Students will be buzzing as they write and illustrate information about bees.

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 plan will have students practice their reading skills and build their reading stamina. This can be used as an introduction to kindergarten reader's workshop!

Charts, graphs, and diagrams are complex text features for students to decipher. Use this lesson to familiarize students with these features. It can be taught on its own or before the lesson Charts and Graphs and Diagrams, Oh My!

Gabi Garcia's "Listening With My Heart" provides students with an opportunity to reflect on ways to extend themselves compassion all year long. This engaging lesson supports students in understanding what kindness is, as well as how to be kind to themselves and others in their daily lives.

Keep it simple! Teach your students to write a summary using the Somebody-Wanted-But-So-Then frame for analyzing a story.

Describe what's happening in the script! Use this lesson to help your ELs describe events in a drama. It can be a stand-alone lesson or used as support to the lesson Summer Drama.

Use this lesson to help your ELs compare and contrast supporting characters from excerpted texts. It can be a stand-alone lesson or support the lesson Understanding Character Traits, Understanding Plot Lesson Part III.

Strengthen your students' understanding of figurative language by helping them interpret visual puns! Students will use a webpage to help them understand puns in their future reading and writing endeavors.

Use this lesson to teach your students to identify story elements and compare them to another text's story elements. This lesson can stand alone or be used as a pre-lesson for the Comparing Texts by the Same Author 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.

In this lesson, your students will explore reading with technology with "Goldilocks and the Three Bears." Students will use a graphic organizer to reflect on this story.