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.

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.

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.

When your students make connections to their personal lives, their writing will flourish! Use this lesson plan as a springboard to helping students plan and develop their own personal narratives.

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.

Give your ELs concrete experience with adverbs and adverbial phrases as a tool to discover details in nonfiction texts. Use this as a stand-alone lesson or as support to the Hey! What's the Big Idea? lesson.

What is the intention of an indentation within a paragraph? Within this lesson, students will explore the reasons why we indent. They’ll categorize and classify content to construct paragraphs that include indentations.

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.

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 three to four sentences.

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz was a 17th century writer and philosopher who today is considered one of the first documented feminists and advocates for women’s education. In this lesson, students will read two nonfiction texts about Sor Juana and discuss her life and accomplishments before writing an opinion piece about her.

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

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.

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

Students become word artists as they use ordinary pictures to practice creating detailed descriptions. This technique helps your class learn how to paint a picture with words.

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.

Help your students strengthen their argument writing! Using the strategy of writing advantages and disadvantages, students will delve into writing strong reasons that are rooted in evidence.

Young writers will learn to manipulate and combine sentences with conjunctions and adverb phrases. This skill helps students understand that crafting sentences is a creative and artistic process.