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!

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.

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.

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

In this lesson, your students will go through the writing process to write about their perfect pets and then make a 3-D version of this pet, mount the final draft, and display it.

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.

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.

Have you ever wished that books, like movies, would state their conflict and genres on the cover? With the help of an Education.com workbook, students will learn to find the clues and read like a writer.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

This is a lesson about the immigration procedures at Ellis Island. Students will learn about the process and creatively write about what it was like for immigrants to pass through Ellis Island.

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

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.

In this lesson, your students will practice writing about places important to them through poetry. By the time they are done, students will have become better writers and taken a walk down memory lane!

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.

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

This lesson helps your ELs identify the role of coordinating conjunctions and compound sentences in nonfiction texts. Use it as a stand-alone lesson or as a pre-lesson to Nonfiction Genres.

Making inferences from texts about the Plains States, your students will learn how to read with a purpose! In this lesson, your students will practice important skills while developing knowledge of various states.

Students put their knowledge of animal adaptations to the test when they create a new creature with its own unique set of adaptations!

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.

In this lesson, students will identify nouns and pronouns as they distinguish between the main idea and supporting details. It may be taught on its own or used as support for the lesson Compare and Contrast Texts on the Same Topic.

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.

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.

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.

Use this lesson to help your ELs strengthen their vocabulary and learn how to create a personal timeline. Teach this lesson as a standalone lesson or use it as support for the lesson Timelines and Nonfiction Text.