Teach your students about picture walks as a strategy to understand the author's purpose in a fictional text. This lesson can be used as a stand-alone lesson or as support for the Examining Author's Purpose in a Fictional Text lesson.

Introduce your students to some of the major structural elements of poetry in this comprehensive 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.

Your little poets will love how their creative writing abilities will grow with this lesson about similes and metaphors. Students engage in fun activities to learn about similes and metaphors and write comparisons as directed.

Kids will love learning some fun facts about elephants while developing their reading comprehension skills. Using T-charts and Venn diagrams, they'll analyze stories and explore different characteristics of fiction and nonfiction.

This lesson gives students practice identifying first person and third person narration in fiction and nonfiction texts. It could be taught as a stand-alone lesson or as a precursor to the lesson Fiction vs. Nonfiction.

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!

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.

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

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.

Describe what's happening in the script! Use this lesson to help your ELs describe events in a drama. It can be a stand-alone lesson or used as support to the lesson Summer Drama.

Use this lesson to help your ELs learn character traits and find them in a text. It can be a stand-alone lesson or a support lesson to the Identifying Character Traits 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."

Use this lesson with your students to teach them to describe the differences between stories with contrasting conjunctions. This lesson can stand-alone or be used as a pre-lesson for the Finding Similarities and Differences lesson.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Good readers analyze texts by looking at similarities and differences. Use this lesson to teach your students to compare and contrast the story elements of two fiction texts.

Reading can be a rollercoaster with its ups and downs! Use this lesson that features a rollercoaster-themed story map to teach your students about story structure and how to use a graphic organizer to visualize it.

Use this lesson to teach your students to describe the similarities between stories with words that signal comparison. This lesson can stand-alone or be used as a pre-lesson for the The Same or Different? You Decide! lesson.

Roll up your sleeves and get out the magnifying glasses! In this lesson, your students will practice finding supportive details and examples in informational texts.

Teach young authors how to "hook" readers with this hands-on lesson. By examining novels and developing their own introductions, students will be able to hone their writing skills.

This exciting lesson plan will introduce your second grade students to two different versions of the well-loved Cinderella story while also teaching them about making inferences and comparing and contrasting stories.

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.

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.