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.

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.

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.

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.

Encourage your students to translate their understanding of theme to poetry. In this lesson, students will evaluate the theme of poems by sketching pictures and citing text evidence.

Use this lesson to help your ELs strengthen their vocabulary and learn how to create a personal timeline. Teach this lesson as a standalone lesson or use it as support for the lesson Timelines and Nonfiction Text.

Create conversations about character changes! Use this lesson plan as a stand-alone lesson for practicing sequencing words in evidenced-based claims about a character, or before the Characters Change Just Like We Do lesson.

Students will have a blast creating their own cartoons and comics. This lesson provides an engaging method to help students demonstrate the use of quotation marks when writing.

In this lesson, your students will go through the writing process to write about their perfect pets and then make a 3-D version of this pet, mount the final draft, and display it.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Expose your students to the wonderful genre of drama, but be sure to teach them the important key terms so they understand the structure. Use this as a stand alone lesson or a pre-lesson for the Putting a Play Together! lesson.

With this integrated lesson, your students will organize information and write an informative book about your current science unit. This lesson will help strengthen student writing while also reviewing and summarizing your current science unit.

Social studies, reading comprehension, and writing come together in this high-engagement lesson about Native American legends!

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.