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!

Your kids will love learning about setting, characters and events as they listen to a classic tale and play a simple game. This lesson helps students improve their reading comprehension skills while they have fun.

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!

This comprehensive overview of story elements will definitely leave students with a better understanding of author's purpose, character traits, sequence, and main idea. It features the acclaimed Leo the Late Bloomer by Robert Kraus.

Discover a new tool for creative assessments and lessons! In this lesson, students will investigate Adobe Spark using Agency by Design thinking routines to help them understand how they can use technology to communicate ideas.

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.

Use this lesson with your students to teach them to describe the differences between stories with contrasting conjunctions. This lesson can stand-alone or be used as a pre-lesson for the Finding Similarities and Differences 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.

Students will learn about the holiday El Día de los Muertos through engaging activities and connecting to their own traditions.

Use this lesson to help your ELs understand how to use conjunctions when contrasting information from two different characters’ perspectives. It can be a stand-alone lesson or used as support to the Whose Point Is It Anyway? lesson.

Ask an important question this month: What does an activist do? This engaging lesson can be used leading up to Martin Luther King Jr. Day (and year-round). It supports students in understanding what it means to be an activist and how Martin Luther King Jr. used collaborative action to change the world and speak out against oppression. Perfect for first graders and second graders, this activity explores word meaning and other reading and writing skills.

Use this lesson to teach your students to describe the similarities between stories with words that signal comparison. This lesson can stand-alone or be used as a pre-lesson for the The Same or Different? You Decide! lesson.

Use a student-friendly glossary and sentence frames to learn about wild weather! Scaffolds will help your students answer text-dependent questions. This lesson can be paired with the main Informational Text: Close Reading lesson.

Did you know that Reader's Theater promotes fluency and builds students' reading confidence? Use this lesson to inspire your students to practice reading and understanding text in the drama genre.

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.