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.

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.

Students become word artists as they use ordinary pictures to practice creating detailed descriptions. This technique helps your class learn how to paint a picture with words.

Students will have a blast creating their own cartoons and comics. This lesson provides an engaging method to help students demonstrate the use of quotation marks when writing.

This experiment is a fun lesson that captures the ears, eyes, and minds of students! It combines writing, reasoning, predictions, and teamwork with candies and soda to produce a memorable lesson on chemical reactions and energy.

This lesson will help your young writers develop a claim, or thesis, and construct an argument around it. You may have students complete the essay by continuing the process with the lesson Literary Argument Writing: Drafting Your Essay.

Informational texts isn't just found in textbooks. In this reading lesson, kids will examine the writing of a middle school student and use it to learn more about main ideas and supporting details.

Teach young writers some commonly used strategies to pace their narrative writing. Students will learn to use formatting, dialogue, and description to speed up or slow down their piece.

This lesson combines an introduction to biomes with some fun Venn diagram exercises. Not only will students learn more about nature, they'll also learn how to make comparisons between different things in nature.

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

Your students will practice searching for clues to uncover the main idea and supporting details in nonfiction texts about John Muir and Day of the Dead traditions around the world.

Natural landmarks are a source of wonder and fascination, and they encourage people’s imaginations. Students will get a chance to use their imaginations in this lesson where social studies and writing combine.

Give your ELs concrete experience with adverbs and adverbial phrases as a tool to discover details in nonfiction texts. Use this as a stand-alone lesson or as support to the Hey! What's the Big Idea? lesson.

Once students have selected a topic related to a piece of literature they have read and mapped out their argument, this lesson will help them turn their prewriting into an essay.

So your students are going to write a narrative? Use these prewriting exercises to help them choose an idea and plan out their story.

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.

Social studies, reading comprehension, and writing come together in this high-engagement lesson about Native American legends!

Imagery is one of the most important tools in a narrative writer's arsenal. In this lesson, students will will learn to craft vivid scenes by selecting powerful verbs and adjectives, as well as to critique descriptive writing using the same criteria.

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.

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.

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!

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.

Every name has a story behind it. This lesson allows students to share the story of their name with their classmates. Not only is it fun, it's ideal for establishing a respectful classroom community.

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.

This lesson gives your students practice researching an inventor to write an informative essay. Students will use a graphic organizer to take notes on the research they conduct in the library or on the internet.