Step into the shoes of an explorer. Students will learn more about the lives and accomplishments of important explorers, and they'll demonstrate their knowledge through a creative writing assignment.

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.

Use this lesson to help your students learn how to find the main idea and details in a nonfiction text using a graphic organizer for support.

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

This lesson helps your ELs identify the role of coordinating conjunctions and compound sentences in nonfiction texts. Use it as a stand-alone lesson or as a pre-lesson to Nonfiction Genres.

Give your ELs concrete experience with adverbs and adverbial phrases as a tool to discover details in nonfiction texts. Use this as a stand-alone lesson or as support to the Hey! What's the Big Idea? lesson.

This lesson will help students map out their argument essay after they have identified a topic. Students will learn the three basic components of constructing an argument: stating a claim, listing reasons, and providing evidence.

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.

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.

Once your students have drafted a persuasive letter, use this lesson to help them polish their writing. Students will use a checklist to ensure that all of the most important parts of their letter are included and the argument is solid.

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

In this lesson, your students will explore the library in search of various genres of nonfiction texts. Teach this lesson at the beginning of the year to familiarize your students with the structure and organization of the library.

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.

Help students learn about descriptive writing with this engaging lesson. Your class will learn to show character emotions though the “show, don’t tell” writing technique with videos, practice writing, and class participation.

Knowing how to write an effective persuasive letter is a powerful tool. Students will learn how to advocate for their ideas by planning and drafting a well-supported persuasive letter on an issue of their choice.

Are your students ready to see narratives from a different perspective? This reading lesson will get students excited about discovering first- and third-person points of view.

Do your students have strong opinions? This lesson, which features a bunch of fun essay-building exercises, provides an outlet for young writers to express their opinions.

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 as they learn about the characters, setting, and plot of their favorite fiction books by creating a story map.

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.

Students often understand the basic conventions of writing, but may need support in incorporating these skills into their work. In this lesson, students will review some of the more common capitalization and punctuation errors and apply their editing skills to real writing.

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.

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.

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.