The hardest part of writing an essay can be the first few steps. This lesson and accompanying graphic organizers will help students map out their ideas and practice crafting paragraphs. With this support, your writers will be off and running!

Students are often taught that written pieces should be long and detailed, but this isn't the case when it comes to summaries. This lesson gives students the chance to practice keeping summaries concise in a fun and engaging way.

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.

Characters, settings, and events, oh my! In this lesson, students will dig deeper into each of these components and learn to provide specific details from their texts.

Arts and crafts, Venn diagrams, and literature all come together as students compare and contrast stories. Opportunities for student creativity are endless!

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.

In this lesson, students will use their creativity, a graphic organizer, and a fun story to learn about character analysis.

What if Cinderella’s stepsisters weren’t really evil? In this engaging lesson, you will introduce your students to multiple points of view and discuss how these different perspectives can change a reader’s experience.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This lesson will have your EL students exploring characters' dialogue and actions to determine their personality traits! Use it on its own or as a support lesson.

In this lesson, students will engage in inquiry, a powerful mindfulness practice to work with judgements about oneself and others.