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.

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.

ELs will get a chance to practice their listening and reading comprehension skills as they answer questions about the key details in a read-aloud text. Use as a stand-alone or pre-lesson for the Questions for Comprehension lesson plan.

Charts, graphs, and diagrams are complex text features for students to decipher. Use this lesson to familiarize students with these features. It can be taught on its own or before the lesson Charts and Graphs and Diagrams, Oh My!

In this lesson, students will practice listening comprehension skills after reading “The Paper Bag Princess” together as a class. Afterward, students will role-play, make inferences, and use summarization to strengthen literacy skills.

Use this lesson to teach your students about the life of Frederick Douglass. First, they will read a picture book that shares facts and beautiful illustrations to teach about his life, and then they will record important information about him on a graphic organizer. Lastly, they'll choose an important event from his life to illustrate and caption.

In this lesson, ask students to compare and contrast two important African-American historical figures. Students will write an informational paragraph on the similarities and differences between W.E.B. Du Bois and George Washington Carver.

Got facts? Got opinions? Use this lesson plan to teach your students to evaluate texts for facts and opinions. Students will use a non-fiction text selection to collect quotes as proof.

Students will analyze census data from Sojourner Truth and Walt Disney using past tense verbs and sentence frames. It can be used on its own or as support to the lesson Researching the Past Using Primary Sources.

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.