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.

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.

Your students will be introduced to the concept of a main idea in this fun lesson using props to support their thinking.

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

Use this lesson to help your ELs understand how to write effective nonfiction text summaries. It can be a stand-alone lesson or a support lesson to the Create a Non-fiction Text Summary lesson plan.

Holy cow! Did President George W. Bush really have a longhorn named Ofelia as a pet? Students learn about wacky White House pets in this fun research activity that includes “president interviews” and a pet choice writing page.

The hardest part of writing an essay can be the first few steps. This lesson and accompanying graphic organizers will help students map out their ideas and practice crafting paragraphs. With this support, your writers will be off and running!

Help your ELs familiarize themselves with prepositional phrases as they search for supporting details in nonfiction texts. This lesson could stand alone or be taught prior to teaching the Detective Reading lesson.

Use this lesson to help your ELs understand main idea and supporting details. They'll analyze non-fiction word, sentence, and paragraph structures. It can be a stand-alone lesson or a support lesson to the In Search of Main Ideas lesson.