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

Keep it simple! Teach your students to write a summary using the Somebody-Wanted-But-So-Then frame for analyzing a story.

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.

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.

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 provides teachers with an opportunity to teach students about reading stamina and assess student comprehension during independent reading.

Do you have students who are constantly asking what, who, where, why, how, and when? It's your turn to ask now! Have them read various stories and ask them to answer these questions in this lesson.

Help your students' story telling abilities grow with this lesson that helps them recount what happened in a story and has them point out key details.

This lesson combines historical facts and creative writing to engage students in exercises that enhance both vocabulary and social studies knowledge.

Make history come alive with this interactive lesson! Students will have a blast presenting a "living timeline" to help their classmates understand the events of the Revolutionary War.

Arts and crafts, Venn diagrams, and literature all come together as students compare and contrast stories. Opportunities for student creativity are endless!

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.

Teach your second graders how to write a prediction and summarize book chapters in this exciting lesson!

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.

Students will have a blast turning a reading passage into a Reader's Theater skit. This lesson teaches them to use dialogue to help readers understand the experiences of different characters.

Knock, knock! It’s the U.S. Census Bureau! In this lesson plan, students analyze primary sources in the form of census data to do research that helps them answer questions about famous people and the time period during which they lived.

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.

In this lesson, students will practice listening comprehension skills after reading “The Paper Bag Princess” together as a class. Afterward, students will role-play, make inferences, and use summarization to strengthen literacy skills.

In this literary lesson, students use fairy tales to practice identifying character traits. Students are challenged to justify their reasoning using text based support.

This fun combination of scavenger hunt and bingo is sure to please young learners. Not only will your students increase their knowledge of text features, they'll also enjoy a selection of engaging games.

Young readers will love this story-filled reading comprehension lesson. It's packed with engaging exercises designed to help students become better at looking for details and annotating passages of text.

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.

Give your class a deeper understanding of theme with this art and poetry-focused lesson plan about theme. By the end of the lesson, students will understand what theme is and how to determine theme in a piece of writing, such as a poem.

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.

This lesson will help students identify the author's point of view and purpose for writing an informational text.

By fourth grade, most students are familiar with story elements such as setting, characters, and plot. In this lesson, students will compare and contrast the elements in two stories with similar themes.

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.

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.

Students will read a short fictional story and discuss why the author included certain details and words. Use this lesson to help your students navigate parts of fictional text to determine the author's purpose!