Good writers begin with a knowledge of who their audience is. They shape their piece knowing that there will be a certain kind of reader on the other side. This lesson will help young writers cultivate an awareness of their audience.

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.

Close reading isn’t about just ticking through words on a page; it’s about absorbing ideas and expanding on them. In this lesson, students will use this strategy to make interpretations about a character's emotions through their actions.

Do your students frequently write short sentences that don’t contain much detail? With this lesson your students will use prepositional phrases to beef up their sentences. Sentences will be transformed!

In this lesson, students will hear the story Drawn Together and create a Diversity Board. They will consider how appreciating each other's differences in school supports relationships and community.

This reading and writing lesson also helps students develop empathy. After paying attention to the main character's responses in Victoria and Elizabeth Kann's Purplelicious, students will relate her experiences to their own.

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.

Real-life connections are made in this realistic writing lesson. Students will explore differences between fantasy and realistic fiction, using trade books as a model for their own writing.

This lesson gives your students practice researching an inventor to write an informative essay. Students will use a graphic organizer to take notes on the research they conduct in the library or on the internet.

Pop, whoosh, ding! Onomatopoeia is a writing technique that makes text come alive. In this lesson, students will learn about onomatopoeia, and apply it to their writing process to create poetry, as a class and individually.

Teach your students to ask and differentiate between recall questions and inferential questions. This lesson will help build a classroom culture around asking deep, inferential questions.

Most comparatives and superlatives are pretty intuitive, but the exceptions can be tricky. This lesson will have your students practicing the most common and misused comparatives and superlatives.

In this lesson, students will explore phrases related to growth mindset through the eyes of basketball player Michael Jordan. They will hear a story about Jordan overcoming his self-doubts and reflect on ways they can approach challenges.

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.

Come one, come all! In this lesson, reading and writing are intertwined as students determine a character's traits from the character's actions. Reading extends into creative writing as students imagine what a character might do next.

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.

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.

Put the FUN! in function tables with this engaging, interactive lesson that will have your students generating their own patterns and tables.

Get your students excited about possessive pronouns with this fun lost-and-found inspired lesson. By talking about items that belong to themselves and their classmates, kids be gain a better understanding of denoting possession.

Can you hear the words here? Help your students distinguish homophones with this lesson. They'll be identifying the correct words in no time!

When your students make connections to their personal lives, their writing will flourish! Use this lesson plan as a springboard to helping students plan and develop their own personal narratives.

Identifying and describing their feelings is an important part of the way children develop social skills. This lesson teaches your students how to identify feelings, and then elaborate on them by speaking and writing in complete sentences.

Earth Day is a worldwide celebration that promotes awareness and appreciation for the environment. Use this lesson to teach your students about Earth Day with an engaging poetry activity.

There's no shortage of homographs in the English language, making them a fun topic to explore with your fourth graders! In this lesson, students will become experts on distinguishing the different meanings of homographs.

Help your students fill in the missing links! With a focus on transitional words and conjunctions, your students will discover the links that will help them combine ideas in their writing.

In this lesson, students will find the perimeter of figures using cheese crackers. Next, they'll design a floor plan for their cheese cracker dream house, to help them practice and retain the formula for finding perimeter.

This lesson gives students foundational skills needed to identify the author's purpose in a variety of texts. Use the lesson as a stand alone or as a pre-lesson to What Were They Thinking?

Give students a chance to experience a different point of view! This fANTastic lesson on narrative style turns young readers into characters of Chris Van Allsburg's Two Bad Ants.

Use this lesson to give your students an opportunity to share about their family traditions. Prior to the lesson, they'll complete a worksheet to gather information about the way their family honors their culture and beliefs with traditions. They'll bring their information back to the classroom to share with their peers.

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz was a 17th century writer and philosopher who today is considered one of the first documented feminists and advocates for women’s education. In this lesson, students will read two nonfiction texts about Sor Juana and discuss her life and accomplishments before writing an opinion piece about her.