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.

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.

Strengthen your students' understanding of figurative language by helping them interpret visual puns! Students will use a webpage to help them understand puns in their future reading and writing endeavors.

Describe what's happening in the script! Use this lesson to help your ELs describe events in a drama. It can be a stand-alone lesson or used as support to the lesson Summer Drama.

Are your students hooking their readers? Use this creative and imaginative writing exercise that will bring student beginnings to life.

Use this lesson to teach your students to identify story elements and compare them to another text's story elements. This lesson can stand alone or be used as a pre-lesson for the Comparing Texts by the Same Author lesson.

Teach your class to develop strong inferencing skills by focusing on clues and hard evidence. In this lesson, students will play a game of “What’s for Breakfast?” to help them link context clues with word meaning.

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.

Give your class the "write" tools they need to become excellent authors. In this literary lesson, students use their knowledge of author's purpose to successfully write pieces that persuade, inform, and entertain.

In this lesson, your students will use guiding questions as a way to organize their thoughts about non-fiction reading. They will also gain an understanding of some of the factors that led to the colonization of the Middle Atlantic States.

Introduce your students to some of the major structural elements of poetry in this comprehensive lesson.

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.

Let your students find out that the sentences they speak so easily are formed of many different parts. Have them break down sentences to learn the various parts that form a sentence!

In this lesson, your students will practice writing about places important to them through poetry. By the time they are done, students will have become better writers and taken a walk down memory lane!

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.

In this lesson, you will read the heartwarming story of Bun Bun Button by Patricia Polacco to your class. Students will then use their own reading skills to describe the two main characters in the story.

Use this lesson to help your ELs compare and contrast supporting characters from excerpted texts. It can be a stand-alone lesson or support the lesson Understanding Character Traits, Understanding Plot Lesson Part III.

Use this lesson with your students to teach them to describe the differences between stories with contrasting conjunctions. This lesson can stand-alone or be used as a pre-lesson for the Finding Similarities and Differences lesson.

Use this lesson to teach your students to describe the similarities between stories with words that signal comparison. This lesson can stand-alone or be used as a pre-lesson for the The Same or Different? You Decide! lesson.

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.

Frederick Douglass was an influential black man in U.S. history. In this lesson, the historical context is set for students so that they can conduct their own research on Frederick Douglass, using a graphic organizer and multiple sources, before writing an informational essay on him. Ideal for fourth and fifth grade students, this lesson plan not only gives students practice in research and essay-writing skills, it also has them exploring a fascinating part of our country's history.

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.

Are the stories the same or different? You decide! Use this lesson with your students to practice comparing the story elements in two fictional stories written by the same author.

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.

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 analyze census data from Sojourner Truth and Walt Disney using past tense verbs and sentence frames. It can be used on its own or as support to the lesson Researching the Past Using Primary Sources.