2nd and 3rd Grade English Language Arts Lesson Plans : Page 3

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.

In this activity, students will make a step book with the definitions and examples for nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and adverbs. This information will be solidified with a fun hands-on game!

Students will develop pre-writing confidence by learning how to approach unfamiliar opinion writing prompts. Writers will generate a topic sentence and flush out supporting information.

Second grade students will step into the author’s shoes as they hunt for evidence to determine what a nonfiction author’s purpose might be.

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

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.

It’s time to make sentences! At the Sentence Cafe, words come together to build stories. Get ready to learn about different parts of speech such as conjunctions, possessive pronouns, articles, and more in this hands-on lesson.

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.

Games are a great way to help students look closer at words! In this lesson, students will learn more about contractions and consonant pairs by creating their own games of concentration.

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.

What do red envelopes, pomelos, and water narcissus flowers have in common? They all bring good fortune during the Chinese New Year! In this lesson, students will write about someone to whom they would like to grant good fortune.

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.

A fun spin on a classic game! This sight word game will help your students with their reading fluency and reinforce foundational reading skills. Students should be fairly fluent in reading Pre-Primer Dolch sight words prior to the lesson.

Your students will enjoy reading the classic story “The Ugly Duckling,” written about a very lovable duck! This reading lesson also includes a fun partner activity to help your students practice comprehension.

It's time to learn about time. In this hands-on lesson, students manipulate clock hands and jump across timelines in order to calculate the "distance" between different times and events.

This lesson incorporates different learning styles to help students get a firm grasp of what a noun is and its function. It even highlights the important tie between grammar and writing.

Use this lesson to help your ELs learn about words and what they mean. This lesson can stand alone or be used as a pre-lesson for the Vocabulary Flash Cards lesson.

Help students gain confidence in recognizing multiples of 10 as they critique a flawed response. Use as a stand-alone scaffolded EL support lesson or prior to teaching Big Spenders.

In this lesson, students use highlighters, graphic organizers, and a classic fable to exercise their understanding of key details and main idea in a text. They will use manipulatives to promote visual and kinetic learning styles.

In this lesson, the class will review what it means to make an inference. After you model how to make an inference in a painting using your schema, your students will work in groups to analyze additional paintings to make more inferences.

Do your students need extra practice forming words with the suffixes -er and* -est* depending on the context? With an abundance of words to explore, your students will learn how to determine which suffix is best for each individual context.

Use this lesson to introduce, review, and teach pronouns! Your students will get to practice using these words and build their reading and language skills.

Give your students a chance to hone their reading comprehension skills as they learn about the characters, setting, and plot of their favorite fiction books by creating a story map.

Earth Day is a worldwide celebration that promotes awareness and appreciation for the environment. Use this lesson to teach your students about Earth Day with an engaging poetry activity.

You’ve probably heard of carnivorous animals, but have you heard of carnivorous plants? Use this lesson to teach your students about carnivorous plants by having them research characteristics and create a presentation.

Strong narratives have clear sequences of events. Through this lesson, students plan out what will happen in their story before they start writing their own engaging narratives.

Expose your students to the wonderful genre of drama, but be sure to teach them the important key terms so they understand the structure. Use this as a stand alone lesson or a pre-lesson for the Putting a Play Together! lesson.

This lesson will provide your ELs with support as they learn about the key elements of fictional text, including characters, setting, and plot. Use as a stand alone activity or a support lesson.

Students will learn to structure their written arguments as they create their own class paper full of opinion editorial pieces in this fun, real-world driven lesson. Step right up and write all about it!

Imagine what that interjection might be! As students learn about the purpose and use of interjections, they will use their imaginations to match interjections with a variety of emotions.