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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Change is inevitable, even for story characters! In this lesson, your students will determine how a character changes throughout a story by focusing on the character’s dialogue and actions.

Help your students strengthen their argument writing! Using the strategy of writing advantages and disadvantages, students will delve into writing strong reasons that are rooted in evidence.

St. Patrick's Day is a widely popular holiday all over the world. Teach your students about some interesting traditions as they write an informative text about how St. Patrick's Day is celebrated.

Give your students an introduction to types of story hooks as they compose original story beginnings the help of a word bank. This can be a stand-alone lesson or a support lesson for the Capture That Reader! lesson plan.

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

Does your class enjoy watching movies? In this action-packed lesson, students will state their opinion on G vs. PG-rated movies in schools, and share three reasons to support it. No silent films here, as students will have a lot to say.

Give your students a chance to hone their reading comprehension skills by creating nonfiction text summaries in this introductory lesson.

Fully adaptable, this lesson can be used to to highlight African American leaders, famous women, veterans, or any other group of individuals who have acted heroically and have positively influenced our nation!

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.

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!

Help your second graders hone their research skills using this animal-themed lesson! Students will enjoy choosing an animal, identifying questions, and researching their answers as they learn about writing informative essays.

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.

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.

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.

Good storytelling always includes a great ending! Your students will learn academic vocabulary and add their own conclusion to a short story. Use this as a stand-alone lesson or as an introduction to the Write Your Own Ending lesson plan.

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.

Help your class grasp the concept of "main idea" with this fun, hands-on lesson. Students will dive into mystery bags full of supportive detail clues to determine the main idea of each bag.

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.

Persuasive writing is at hand! With authentic and relevant school-related topics, students will encounter and use organizational structures found in persuasive essays.

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.

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

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

There is great wonder in building things and taking them apart. Use this grammar lesson with your students to teach them how to construct and deconstruct contractions while correctly using an apostrophe.

Boost your students’ writing with instruction on book titles! A title should be catchy and inclusive of the content of a book. Use this lesson to teach your students the art and mechanics of writing terrific titles.

Second graders love field trips and sharing their opinions! This fun lesson combines both, as students must convince their teacher to take them on a field trip by practicing their opinion writing and using paragraph structure.