Look at history! In this lesson, guide students through an exploration of the context, causes, and effects of the Transcontinental Railroad, and help them practice identifying the main idea and supporting details in a nonfiction text.

Your students will practice searching for clues to uncover the main idea and supporting details in nonfiction texts about John Muir and Day of the Dead traditions around the world.

Use this lesson to help your ELs identify and discuss the author's point and the information that supports it. It can be a stand-alone lesson or used as support for the What’s the Point? lesson.

Similes, metaphors, and idioms are some of the most widely used literary devices in both speaking and writing. Students will review each of these and practice creating some of their own.

Help students learn how to read passages with multiple main ideas and differentiate between main ideas and supporting details by creating a graphic organizer with proof from the text.

Nourish your child's inner writer with this lesson on three different forms of literature: poetry, prose, and drama. After going through some examples of each, students will demonstrate their knowledge by filling out bubble maps.

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.

This engaging lesson teaches students about the famous author Faith Ringgold. Students will explore two pieces of literature, comparing and contrasting story elements, then write opinion pieces to illustrate which book they liked best.

Students will learn about the holiday El Día de los Muertos through engaging activities and connecting to their own traditions.

Put your students' imaginations to the test with this lesson on storytelling and creative writing. After reading some classic fairy tales, students will create their own using printed figures.

Use this lesson to help your ELs understand main idea and supporting details in the context of sentences and paragraphs. It can be a stand-alone lesson or a support lesson to the Power Reading lesson.

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.

Have your students stretch their creativity with this lesson that teaches them about haikus and has them practice their syllable counting.

This lesson will help your students summarize short stories and describe how characters respond to challenges using a story map. Use this lesson as a stand-alone activity or a support lesson for the Story Mapping Group Work lesson plan.

This lesson focuses on how punctuation affects reading fluency and comprehension using graphic organizers and sentence stems. Use this lesson as a stand-alone activity or a support for the Punctuation and Prosody lesson plan.

Thinking about who, what, when, where, and why isn’t just for detectives! Students will practice gleaning important information from texts using these questions and a few other tools.

This lesson provides students with the opportunity to critically think about data. Use this lesson alongside Line Plots: Representing the Length of Classroom Items or as a stand alone lesson.

Use this lesson to teach your students how people survived in the New England colonies when they were first created.

Make history come alive with this interactive lesson! Students will have a blast presenting a "living timeline" to help their classmates understand the events of the Revolutionary War.

Take your students to a magical place by having them read stories such as "The Ugly Duckling" and "Rumpelstiltskin." They can read these magical stories and figure out the main idea and details in them!

Once your students have drafted a persuasive letter, use this lesson to help them polish their writing. Students will use a checklist to ensure that all of the most important parts of their letter are included and the argument is solid.

Your students will love learning all about the playful characters in a classic read-aloud text while digging into what makes characters unique. Use as a stand-alone or support lesson for the How to Analyze a Character lesson plan.

Once students have selected a topic related to a piece of literature they have read and mapped out their argument, this lesson will help them turn their prewriting into an essay.

Your students’ organization and prewriting skills will shine as they introduce their topic, state an opinion, and list three supporting reasons.

Your class' prewriting skills will burst with style as they state opinion and supporting reason sentences with descriptive adjectives.

Let's get reading! In this lesson, students will identify the main idea and details of a nonfiction text. Use this on its own or as support for the lesson Connecting the Coasts: Effects of the Transcontinental Railroad.

In this lesson, students will engage in inquiry, a powerful mindfulness practice to work with judgements about oneself and others.

Emphasize student understanding and reasoning! This lesson plan helps learners solve story problems using sense-making strategies. This can be used alongside the lesson Solving Word Problems or as a stand-alone lesson.

With this integrated lesson, your students will organize information and write an informative book about your current science unit. This lesson will help strengthen student writing while also reviewing and summarizing your current science unit.

In this lesson, students will identify nouns and pronouns as they distinguish between the main idea and supporting details. It may be taught on its own or used as support for the lesson Compare and Contrast Texts on the Same Topic.