Young learners will love finding the main ideas in short informational texts. Featuring a bunch of fun worksheets, this lesson will help students learn about different topics while improving their reading skills.

The hardest part of writing an essay can be the first few steps. This lesson and accompanying graphic organizers will help students map out their ideas and practice crafting paragraphs. With this support, your writers will be off and running!

Students will learn to structure their written arguments as they create their own class paper full of opinion editorial pieces in this fun, real-world driven lesson. Step right up and write all about it!

It's time for some storytelling fun. In this creative lesson, students become authors and put together their own mini storybooks.

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.

Use this engaging lesson plan to introduce the concept of perspective and story sequencing to your ELs. This can be used as a stand-alone lesson or as support to the lesson Put Me in the Zoo.

This lesson will have your EL students exploring characters' dialogue and actions to determine their personality traits! Use it on its own or as a support lesson.

This is a lesson about the immigration procedures at Ellis Island. Students will learn about the process and creatively write about what it was like for immigrants to pass through Ellis Island.

Help your ELs use transition words as they make predictions and summarize a short fictional text. This lesson can be used as a stand alone activity or a support lesson.

Let's get reading! In this lesson, students will identify the main idea and details of a nonfiction text. Use this on its own or as support for the lesson Connecting the Coasts: Effects of the Transcontinental Railroad.

In this lesson, your students will go through the writing process to write about their perfect pets and then make a 3-D version of this pet, mount the final draft, and display it.

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!

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.

Text formatting can add a lot of richness to how information is explained. In this lesson students will explore the organization of nonfiction texts and go on a scavenger hunt for different kinds of text formatting features.

Similes, metaphors, and idioms are some of the most widely used literary devices in both speaking and writing. Students will review each of these and practice creating some of their own.

Create conversations about character changes! Use this lesson plan as a stand-alone lesson for practicing sequencing words in evidenced-based claims about a character, or before the Characters Change Just Like We Do 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.

Help your ELs identify the characters and their dialogue in a story. This lesson can stand alone or be used as a pre-lesson for the Action! Students Create Reader’s Theater lesson.

Help your class grasp the concept of "main idea" with this fun, hands-on lesson. Students will dive into mystery bags full of supportive detail clues to determine the main idea of each bag.

Imagery is one of the most important tools in a narrative writer's arsenal. In this lesson, students will will learn to craft vivid scenes by selecting powerful verbs and adjectives, as well as to critique descriptive writing using the same criteria.

Help students learn about descriptive writing with this engaging lesson. Your class will learn to show character emotions though the “show, don’t tell” writing technique with videos, practice writing, and class participation.

Have your students stretch their creativity with this lesson that teaches them about haikus and has them practice their syllable counting.

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.

In this lesson, students use highlighters, graphic organizers, and a classic fable to exercise their understanding of key details and main idea in a text. They will use manipulatives to promote visual and kinetic learning styles.

Students often understand the basic conventions of writing, but may need support in incorporating these skills into their work. In this lesson, students will review some of the more common capitalization and punctuation errors and apply their editing skills to real writing.

Good storytelling always includes a great ending! Your students will learn academic vocabulary and add their own conclusion to a short story. Use this as a stand-alone lesson or as an introduction to the Write Your Own Ending lesson plan.

Once students have selected a topic related to a piece of literature they have read and mapped out their argument, this lesson will help them turn their prewriting into an essay.

Give your students an introduction to types of story hooks as they compose original story beginnings the help of a word bank. This can be a stand-alone lesson or a support lesson for the Capture That Reader! lesson plan.

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.

Use this lesson to help your students learn how to find the main idea and details in a nonfiction text using a graphic organizer for support.