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.

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.

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.

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.

Figurative language can be difficult, especially for ELs. With the help of context clues and exposure to common idioms, it can be a piece of cake! Use this as a stand-alone lesson or as a pre-lesson for the Take a Walk with Idioms lesson.

Use this lesson to teach students about the importance of reading fluently to support comprehension. Use as a stand alone activity or a support for the Increasing Reading Stamina and Comprehension lesson plan.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

Let’s put it all together! In this lesson, students will explore the different parts of a drama or play. By the end of the lesson they will be able to define terminology related to plays and give examples of the unique genre features!

Imagery is one of the most important tools in a narrative writer's arsenal. In this lesson, students will will learn to craft vivid scenes by selecting powerful verbs and adjectives, as well as to critique descriptive writing using the same criteria.

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.

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.

Characters, settings, and events, oh my! In this lesson, students will dig deeper into each of these components and learn to provide specific details from their texts.

If young writers can learn how to write a solid paragraph, then they have the building blocks of an essay. In this lesson, students will study paragraph structure and practice organizing ideas into paragraphs.

Everyone loves an intriguing introduction! Help your second graders hook their readers as they practice writing new and improved introductions to well-loved fictional stories in this fun writing lesson.

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

So your students are going to write a narrative? Use these prewriting exercises to help them choose an idea and plan out their story.

Students will get lots of editing practice in this lesson! After reviewing basic editing symbols, students will edit provided stories and a partner’s work. Student will also learn about editing tools used in word processing.