Get your students excited about expository text through this fun introduction to text features! Students will create their own glossary of nonfiction text features.

Catalina Magdalena Hoopensteiner Wallendiner Hogan Logan Bogan Was Her Name, and students will have a blast writing persuasive sentences about her. This quirky lesson is sure to please young, creative minds.

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.

Want students to use text features in their writing? Begin by having them examine the text features that they see in informational books.

This lesson plan teaches students about Jean-Michel Basquiat and his life as a child. First, students will listen to a story and figure out the main topic and details. Next, students will be asked to think deeply about what it means to be an artist and some of the types of art they like to create. Perfect for first graders and second graders, the lesson Black Artists: Basquiat highlights reading informational texts and building vocabulary.

Change is inevitable, even for story characters! In this lesson, your students will determine how a character changes throughout a story by focusing on the character’s dialogue and actions.

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!

This engaging lesson plan provides students with an opportunity to learn all about America's prima ballerina, Maria Tallchief.

Stories can change a lot depending on the point of view they are told from. In this lesson, students explore point of view by comparing and contrasting two versions of "The Three Little Pigs."

From seed to flower, students will learn all about the life cycle of a plant in this science lesson. Your class will discover what living things need to grow, and learn the various stages of a plant’s life span, with new vocabulary words.

Young detectives will have a blast as they find context clues and solve a mystery in this fun-filled lesson plan. By paying close attention to a story, students will figure out missing letters to decipher a hidden message.

Using the same action verbs all the time can get old. Help your students spice up their writing by teaching them to identify and use action verbs. Your young writers will explore synonyms to improve their repertoire of action verbs.

Let’s put it all together! In this lesson, students will explore the different parts of a drama or play. By the end of the lesson they will be able to define terminology related to plays and give examples of the unique genre features!

To help develop independent readers, we need to make sure our students are able to identify books they can read independently. Teaching students to pick "just right" books helps them develop reading fluency by reading books at their level.

This lesson will help students identify the author's point of view and purpose for writing an informational text.

Bing! Bam! Boom! In this bombastic lesson, students will learn about onomatopoeia and create word art to describe the sounds these words make.

It’s raining, it’s pouring! Did you know that clouds can help you predict the weather? Use this lesson with your students to teach them about five different types of clouds and the weather to expect with each type.

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.

Your students will deepen their understanding and build their vocabulary through reading nonfiction texts and identifying unknown words.

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.

Use this lesson to teach your students about facts and opinions. Teach them that a certain belief that they have about someone or something is not a fact!

What makes a poem a poem? And what makes a story a story? In this lesson, students learn to distinguish between different types of texts while analyzing the sentences and words they encounter.

Make learning idioms a piece of cake with this third grade writing lesson. Students will learn common idioms, and illustrate them to solidify their understanding of the concept.

This lesson provides teachers with an opportunity to teach students about reading stamina and assess student comprehension during independent reading.

This lesson plan teaches students about Frida Kahlo and her legacy as an activist and artist who continues to inspire people all over the world. Students will listen to a story about Frida Kahlo and reflect on what it means to be an artist.

In this lesson, students will learn all about Maria Montessori, a pioneering researcher and teacher, and create their own biographical books about this inspiring woman.

Teaching figurative language is as easy as pie with this lesson. Give students a chance to explore different kinds of figurative language as they develop their own comic strip.

This exciting lesson plan will introduce your second grade students to two different versions of the well-loved Cinderella story while also teaching them about making inferences and comparing and contrasting stories.

What’s the deal with all of those text features? Use this handy lesson plan to help your second graders answer that very question.

Introduce the concept of author’s purpose in fiction texts with this fun reading lesson! Students will discuss three examples of fictional texts to determine the purpose of each.