This lesson helps your ELs identify the role of coordinating conjunctions and compound sentences in nonfiction texts. Use it as a stand-alone lesson or as a pre-lesson to Nonfiction Genres.

What do red envelopes, pomelos, and water narcissus flowers have in common? They all bring good fortune during the Chinese New Year! In this lesson, students will write about someone to whom they would like to grant good fortune.

Thinking about who, what, when, where, and why isn’t just for detectives! Students will practice gleaning important information from texts using these questions and a few other tools.

Arts and crafts, Venn diagrams, and literature all come together as students compare and contrast stories. Opportunities for student creativity are endless!

This lesson teaches kids all about Malcolm X and how his childhood influenced him to become one of America's most well known, controversial, and revolutionary figures. First kids will listen to a read-aloud authored by Malcolm X's daughter, Ilyasah Shabazz, and then they will write an informative paragraph.

Give your class a deeper understanding of theme with this art and poetry-focused lesson plan about theme. By the end of the lesson, students will understand what theme is and how to determine theme in a piece of writing, such as a poem.

Give your students a chance to hone their reading comprehension skills by creating nonfiction text summaries in this introductory lesson.

Your students will learn all about what makes a fictional character special when they become character detectives! Use this lesson to introduce the concept of using key details from a text to gather information.

What if Cinderella’s stepsisters weren’t really evil? In this engaging lesson, you will introduce your students to multiple points of view and discuss how these different perspectives can change a reader’s experience.

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 continue their informational writing project by creating an essay outline prior to drafting.

Give your students a chance to hone their reading comprehension skills as they learn about the characters, setting, and plot of their favorite fiction books by creating a story map.

Figurative language can be difficult, especially for ELs. With the help of context clues and exposure to common idioms, it can be a piece of cake! Use this as a stand-alone lesson or as a pre-lesson for the Take a Walk with Idioms lesson.

Students begin their informational writing process by gathering information through research. They will use a graphic organizer to record important information and sources and reflect on how to present the information.

Students will continue their informational writing project by organizing the information they gathered through research. They will use a graphic organizer to organize their ideas and sort their research notes into meaningful sections.

Use this lesson to help your ELs understand main idea and supporting details in the context of sentences and paragraphs. It can be a stand-alone lesson or a support lesson to the Power Reading lesson.

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.

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.

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.