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.

Ask an important question this month: What does an activist do? This engaging lesson can be used leading up to Martin Luther King Jr. Day (and year-round). It supports students in understanding what it means to be an activist and how Martin Luther King Jr. used collaborative action to change the world and speak out against oppression. Perfect for first graders and second graders, this activity explores word meaning and other reading and writing skills.

Need a promotion? Then have your students participate in a writing lesson that will have them voting for you! Give students the opportunity to place teachers in the spotlight, as they persuade others why teachers make the best presidents.

Gabi Garcia's "Listening With My Heart" provides students with an opportunity to reflect on ways to extend themselves compassion all year long. This engaging lesson supports students in understanding what kindness is, as well as how to be kind to themselves and others in their daily lives.

This tasty lesson will teach second graders about fractions using cookies.

Help your students learn new vocabulary in this hands-on lesson. Your class will learn new words by adding a silent e on the end of familiar CVC words.

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.

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.

Do your students struggle with word choices? In this lesson, students will learn strategies for choosing vivid words for their poetry. Although the “persona poem” is used as a model, any type of poetry can be used!

Spring is in the air...and on paper! In this spring lesson plan, students will read spring-themed sentences in search of nouns and 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.

Use this lesson to teach your students about Frederick Douglass and the impact that words had on his life. First, they will read a picture book that shares facts and beautiful illustrations to teach about his life. Then, they'll complete a graphic organizer with peers to record important details and events in his life. Students will then demonstrate understanding by creating a poster with images and key words that stand out when they think about Frederick Douglass.

Use this lesson to reinforce using sentence level context clues to decode challenging words in a nonfiction text. This can be used as a stand alone activity or a support the Using Context Clues to Understand Word Meanings lesson.

Suffixes can do some amazing things. They can turn "power" into "powerful," "big" into "bigger," and "fear" into "fearless." This hands-on lesson allows young writers to build their own words using different root words and suffixes.

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

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.

Through creative and engaging activities, your students will explore and learn about landforms. In this lesson, they will make their own mini dictionary of landforms.

This lesson will have your students learn to compare and contrast using both a classic fairy tale and a fractured versions of a fairy tale.

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 support lesson provides students the opportunity to use two different tools to measure the length of familiar objects while introducing content specific vocabulary words. Use alone or alongside the lesson How Big is the Playground?

It’s time to make some sentences! In this lesson, students will review parts of speech and simple vs. complex sentences. They will then use their knowledge to create word grab bags to use when forming sentences.

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.

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.

Use this lesson to help your ELs understand inference, evidence, and schema. They'll analyze sentences to make inferences using evidence. It can be a stand-alone lesson or a support lesson to the Inferring With Pictures lesson plan.

A fun spin on a classic game! This sight word game will help your students with their reading fluency and reinforce foundational reading skills. Students should be fairly fluent in reading Pre-Primer Dolch sight words prior to the lesson.

Games are a great way to help students look closer at words! In this lesson, students will learn more about contractions and consonant pairs by creating their own games of concentration.

Help your students learn the standard measures of length and foster critical thinking with this engaging lesson. Use alongside The Smaller They Come or as a stand-alone activity.

This lesson plan teaches kids about W.E.B. Du Bois through video and a short informational text. Students will compare/contrast their findings and create a poster in small groups showing what they learned.

It's time to learn about time. In this hands-on lesson, students manipulate clock hands and jump across timelines in order to calculate the "distance" between different times and events.

What makes a story, a story? In this lesson, students examine the elements of stories. They learn to use pre-planning strategies to set their own stories up for success... before they even start writing!