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.

Engage students in reading grade-level texts by making and testing predictions. Your students will be excited to read on to find out if their predictions are correct!

Teach your class to develop strong inferencing skills by focusing on clues and hard evidence. In this lesson, students will play a game of “What’s for Breakfast?” to help them link context clues with word meaning.

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!

Sugar skulls and fancy dress aren't all there is to the Day of the Dead. In this lesson students will learn about several societies that celebrate their dead, as well as some of the history behind the traditions of the Día de los Muertos.

Popular fiction throughout the ages colors the way people speak. In this short lesson, students will read a myth and non-fiction paragraph in order to identify and define words that come from mythology.

This winter-themed lesson plan, which incorporates the book Tree of Cranes by Allen Say, teaches students about Japanese traditions and customs. They will review the basic elements of a narrative story, and then write their own narratives about a special event or moment in their life.

Use this story map and your choice of short fiction passages to develop your students’ reading comprehension skills with this group reading lesson.

Anansi invites his friend Turtle to dinner at his house ... but does he treat him like a friend? In this reading comprehension lesson, your class practices questioning, retelling, and identifying the moral in "Anansi and the Turtle."

All fictional stories have story elements but they sure can differ between stories. In this lesson, students will compare and contrast the story elements of two fictional stories and document their findings in a graphic organizer.

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.

Every great reader and writer knows that syntax matters. During this lesson, students will use the close reading strategy to focus on word choice, and use their understanding of syntax to develop theories about patterns in the text.

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.

Use this lesson to teach students about the importance of reading fluently to support comprehension. Use as a stand alone activity or a support for the Increasing Reading Stamina and Comprehension lesson plan.

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.

Marie Curie’s monumental achievements in chemistry and physics are remarkable. In this lesson, your students will read two accounts of her life, integrate the details, and assess the importance of having more than one source of information.

Use this lesson to reinforce using sentence level context clues to decode challenging words in a nonfiction text. This can be used as a stand alone activity or a support the Using Context Clues to Understand Word Meanings lesson.