Help your second graders hone their research skills using this animal-themed lesson! Students will enjoy choosing an animal, identifying questions, and researching their answers as they learn about writing informative essays.

Who doesn’t love learning about animals? Engage students in research as they write informational books about animals.

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

It's time to make—and hide—animals! In this lesson, students read a story about camouflage and then create their own animals to hide. Finally, students write an informational paragraph to describe their animals' hiding powers.

You’ve probably heard of carnivorous animals, but have you heard of carnivorous plants? Use this lesson to teach your students about carnivorous plants by having them research characteristics and create a presentation.

Have your students stretch their creativity with this lesson that teaches them about haikus and has them practice their syllable counting.

Your students will be introduced to the concept of a main idea in this fun lesson using props to support their thinking.

Your class' prewriting skills will burst with style as they state opinion and supporting reason sentences with descriptive adjectives.

Use this lesson to help your ELs understand how to write effective nonfiction text summaries. It can be a stand-alone lesson or a support lesson to the Create a Non-fiction Text Summary lesson plan.

Holy cow! Did President George W. Bush really have a longhorn named Ofelia as a pet? Students learn about wacky White House pets in this fun research activity that includes “president interviews” and a pet choice writing page.

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!

Get students curious about reading with these activities designed to support comprehension. This lesson plan can be used alone or with the Main Ideas and Details lesson plan.

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.

Your students will love learning all about the playful characters in a classic read-aloud text while digging into what makes characters unique. Use as a stand-alone or support lesson for the How to Analyze a Character lesson plan.

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.

Your students will learn all about what makes a fictional character special when they become character detectives! Use this lesson to introduce the concept of using key details from a text to gather information.

Help your ELs familiarize themselves with prepositional phrases as they search for supporting details in nonfiction texts. This lesson could stand alone or be taught prior to teaching the Detective Reading lesson.

Use this lesson to help your ELs understand main idea and supporting details. They'll analyze non-fiction word, sentence, and paragraph structures. It can be a stand-alone lesson or a support lesson to the In Search of Main Ideas lesson.