What is the cause, and what is the effect? Use this resource to teach your students how to identify examples of cause and effect in nonfiction text.

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.

Start Your Engines! It's time to teach your students how to summarize fiction text as you race down Summary Raceway.

Can your students capture the details that lead to the central idea in a text? In this lesson, students will work collaboratively to connect the details with the central ideas.

That’s right! The theme applies to everyone! Use this interactive lesson to teach your students how to find the theme of a fictional text.

In this lesson, your students will explore the world through a variety of picture books. They will examine a variety of themes through each text that they read and determine any common themes among the texts.

This lesson gives students the chance to demonstrate and reinforce their knowledge of sequencing. Have them role play a fantasy text to practice sequencing!

Making inferences is a key skill to master before going on to read more difficult fictional texts in fifth grade. This lesson helps your students solidify their inference skills with a focus on citing evidence in fictional text.

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.

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.

The proof is in the pudding! Use this lesson to teach your students how to use text evidence as proof when answering questions after reading. They will use evidence-based terms as they answer basic comprehension questions.

Use this lesson to help your ELs learn character traits and find them in a text. It can be a stand-alone lesson or a support lesson to the Identifying Character Traits lesson.

Teach your students the importance of text features with informational readings about endangered species around the world. This lesson on wildlife doubles as a great way for young learners to hone their reading comprehension skills.

What the character will do next? Designed to teach students the skill of predicting characters’ actions, this lesson guides students to use clues and evidence from the text to make their predictions. Let’s follow those clues!

Charts, graphs, and diagrams are complex text features for students to decipher. Use this lesson to familiarize students with these features. It can be taught on its own or before the lesson Charts and Graphs and Diagrams, Oh My!

This lesson helps students learn about asking and answering questions about a text. It also exposes them to valuable lessons about trying to figure out their dreams and not giving up along the way.

Did you know that comparative tasks improve comprehension and help students develop higher order thinking skills? In this lesson, students will compare nonfiction texts on the same topic using Venn diagrams and performance!

We aren’t mind readers, but we can still figure out why the author wrote a text and what an author thinks about the topic! This lesson will teach your students the main purposes for writing.

In this lesson, students will examine illustrations and write about them using declarative sentences. This can be used on its own or as support for the lesson A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words: Connecting Text and Illustrations.

If you've ever had something go wrong, you know how it feels to search for a solution! Use this lesson to teach your students to identify problems and solutions in fictional text.

Every great reader and writer knows that syntax matters. During this lesson, students will use the close reading strategy to focus on word choice, and use their understanding of syntax to develop theories about patterns in the text.

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.

Use this lesson to gauge your students’ basic comprehension of fiction text. If they can answer who, what, when, where, why, and how questions, you know they have a handle on it and it’s time to get into more critical thinking!

Use this lesson to help your ELs identify the main idea and supporting evidence in a short fictional text. It can be a stand-alone lesson or used as support for the lesson Reading Closely.

A caption reveals important information to a reader. Use this lesson with your students to teach them about plant structures and their functions, while they learn how to be a text feature author.

What do Malala Yousafzai, Al Gore, and Michelle Obama all have in common? They are all nonfiction authors with a purpose. In this interactive lesson, students will gain practice looking at details in text to identify the author’s purpose.

Teach your students to look for the repeated words and phrases in a nonfiction text as they pick out important information. This lesson can stand alone or be used as a pre-lesson for the Determining Importance lesson.

Did you know that Reader's Theater promotes fluency and builds students' reading confidence? Use this lesson to inspire your students to practice reading and understanding text in the drama genre.

Your students’ understanding will reach its peak when they ask detail-seeking questions from observations made about plateaus, mesas, canyons, and buttes. Students will use illustrations and text to assist in their questions and answers.

When writing, authors need to create a strong hook and ending to draw their readers into the text. In this lesson, students will develop strong support for a movie or book that engages the reader.