This lesson combines historical facts and creative writing to engage students in exercises that enhance both vocabulary and social studies knowledge.

Use this lesson to help your ELs evaluate the purpose of text features and justify their answers. It can be a stand-alone lesson or used as support for the lesson Comparing Nonfiction Text Features.

Sugar skulls and fancy dress aren't all there is to the Day of the Dead. In this lesson students will learn about several societies that celebrate their dead, as well as some of the history behind the traditions of the Día de los Muertos.

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.

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.

Your students may know about Rosa Parks, but do they know about the Montgomery Bus Boycott that her famous action inspired? Enhance students' knowledge of this important part of the Civil Rights movement while teaching cause and effect.

This lesson plan integrates art and reading to create a character by personifying a pumpkin. Your students will enjoy writing a story about a character that they have created!

Knock, knock! It’s the U.S. Census Bureau! In this lesson plan, students analyze primary sources in the form of census data to do research that helps them answer questions about famous people and the time period during which they lived.

"You must be nice to him, Wendy impressed on her brothers." In this lesson, your class continues work in their Peter Pan and Neverland workbooks, focusing on comprehension of Wendy Darling's personality.

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.

Give your class a deeper understanding of theme with this art and poetry-focused lesson plan about theme. By the end of the lesson, students will understand what theme is and how to determine theme in a piece of writing, such as a poem.

Improve your students' comprehension of non-fictional reading through this lesson that teaches them about text features. Students will find their own text features and explain why they aid in the reading process.

Whoa, weather! Using technology as an aid, students will put their research skills to the test while learning about hurricanes.

Use a student-friendly glossary and sentence frames to learn about wild weather! Scaffolds will help your students answer text-dependent questions. This lesson can be paired with the main Informational Text: Close Reading lesson.

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.

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.

All fictional stories have story elements but they sure can differ between stories. In this lesson, students will compare and contrast the story elements of two fictional stories and document their findings in a graphic organizer.

Students will learn about three nonfiction text features: charts, graphs, and diagrams. They will analyze and interpret the information represented in these visual forms and discover how they aid in the comprehension of nonfiction texts.

Show and prove! Use this lesson plan and say farewell to fiction reading logs of yore, as your students (literally) draw connections across theme, cause, and effect.

Engage students in analysis by examining archetypes in fairy tales. Teach students to identify heroes and villains in fairy tales, examine patterns, and create their own fairy tales to express their knowledge of archetypes.

Adaptations are often used to retell old stories in new mediums. However, not all adaptations are exactly like their originals. This lesson helps students understand how inclusions and omissions can change a story.

Use this lesson to help your ELs summarize information from a text and use context clues to determine the meaning of unfamiliar words. This lesson can be a stand-alone lesson or used as support to the Day 4 section of the Star Unit lesson.

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

Use this lesson to teach your students about the lives of 10 important leaders during the suffrage movement. Children will read a picture book that highlights 10 leaders who strove to win the right to vote for American women. Children will then work in groups to research and learn more about these inspiring women who dreamed big and never gave up. Finally, students will share their findings with the rest of the class.

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

Keep it simple! Teach your students to write a summary using the Somebody-Wanted-But-So-Then frame for analyzing a story.

Use this lesson to help your ELs understand how to use conjunctions when contrasting information from two different characters’ perspectives. It can be a stand-alone lesson or used as support to the Whose Point Is It Anyway? lesson.

By fourth grade, most students are familiar with story elements such as setting, characters, and plot. In this lesson, students will compare and contrast the elements in two stories with similar themes.