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.

Allow your students to explore the pros and cons of different strategies used to find the area of rectangles. Use this as a stand alone lesson or as a pre-lesson for the Multiplication and Area in the Community Garden lesson.

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.