1st - 3rd Grade Reading Comprehension Lesson Plans

In this lesson, students will use their creativity, a graphic organizer, and a fun story to learn about character analysis.

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.

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!

Mae Jemison was the first African American female astronaut to enter space! Use the Who Is Mae Jemison? lesson plan to get to know this prominent scientist and entrepreneur. Students will read about Mae and then answer questions about her.

Teach young authors how to "hook" readers with this hands-on lesson. By examining novels and developing their own introductions, students will be able to hone their writing skills.

Good readers analyze texts by looking at similarities and differences. Use this lesson to teach your students to compare and contrast the story elements of two fiction texts.

In this lesson, you will read the heartwarming story of Bun Bun Button by Patricia Polacco to your class. Students will then use their own reading skills to describe the two main characters in the story.

Students will have a blast turning a reading passage into a Reader's Theater skit. This lesson teaches them to use dialogue to help readers understand the experiences of different characters.

Use this lesson to help your ELs learn character traits and find them in a text. It can be a stand-alone lesson or a support lesson to the Identifying Character Traits lesson.

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.

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.

This lesson plan integrates art and reading to create a character by personifying a pumpkin. Your students will enjoy writing a story about a character that they have created!

Improve your students' comprehension of non-fictional reading through this lesson that teaches them about text features. Students will find their own text features and explain why they aid in the reading process.

Through this lesson, your students will use academic vocabulary to discuss character traits, author's purpose, and the sequence of events in a story.

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."

It’s time to take a trip around the world and experience Christmas in different countries. Students will explore how their Christmas traditions compare and contrast with kids across the world and chart their findings on a Venn diagram.

Getting hooked on a series or type of character creates reader engagement! Use this lesson to challenge your students to compare and contrast fictional texts as they find the joy in reading books by the same author.

This lesson will have your students learn to compare and contrast using both a classic fairy tale and a fractured versions of a fairy tale.

Make it move! In this lesson, students will learn about energy and make connections between force and energy. Through a hands-on approach, students will work in teams to construct and report on their experiments.

Teach your second graders how to write a prediction and summarize book chapters in this exciting lesson!

Introduce students to fictional story elements with a book by first grade favorite, Mo Willems! This lesson plan can be used alone or with the Goldilocks and the Three Bears: Key Details lesson plan.

Explore a day in the life of a pencil! Your students will practice different points of view by thinking outside the box and writing as though they are something else.

Story elements help to bring beloved fairy tales to life in this literacy lesson. Your students will learn to identify the title, author, setting, characters, problem, and solution in a fiction text.

Your students’ understanding will reach its peak when they ask detail-seeking questions from observations made about plateaus, mesas, canyons, and buttes. Students will use illustrations and text to assist in their questions and answers.

From labeled pictures to glossaries, there are lots of different nonfiction text features for students to learn about. In this lesson, students hunt for text features while learning how they provide meaning and present information.

Teach your class about the genre of traditional literature, made up of stories from around the world that have been told for generations. In this lesson, students will read fairy tales and compare story elements in each piece of literature.

Engage students in analysis by examining archetypes in fairy tales. Teach students to identify heroes and villains in fairy tales, examine patterns, and create their own fairy tales to express their knowledge of archetypes.

What adventures can a reindeer, candy cane, and a snowman embark on? Let’s find out! In this writing lesson, students will write a Christmas-themed narrative incorporating characters, setting, problem, and solution.

Use this lesson to help students identify the elements of a fictional text while gaining more knowledge about parts of speech. Use as a stand alone activity or a support lesson for Fairy Tales: Identifying Story Elements.

Every storyteller needs to understand beginning, middle, and end. The same goes for young readers. Help your students grasp the concept of story sections with this hands-on sequencing lesson.