Bring theme to life with Chris Van Allsburg's The Sweetest Fig, a story with a great message for young readers to discover. This lesson pairs a wonderful read-aloud with activities and fun videos to keep your students engaged.

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.

In this support lesson, your students will compare and contrast character traits using a graphic organizer. It can be a stand-alone lesson or used as support for the lesson Comparing Two Characters.

In this lesson, students will use conjunctions to compare and contrast scary stories. It can be taught independently or used as a pre-lesson to Using Story Elements to Compare and Contrast Fiction Texts.

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.

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.

You won't strike out with this lesson on finding the theme of a script. Use this lesson to help your students identify the elements of a script and find the theme.

Use this lesson to help your ELs identify and understand the meaning of metaphors. It can be a stand-alone lesson or used as support for the lesson What's a Metaphor?

Help students learn how to read passages with multiple main ideas and differentiate between main ideas and supporting details by creating a graphic organizer with proof from the text.

Help ELs learn how to compare and contrast multiple nonfiction resources, using transition words to support their understanding. It can be a stand-alone lesson or support for the lesson Compare and Contrast Information Across Sources.

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.