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

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.

Need a promotion? Then have your students participate in a writing lesson that will have them voting for you! Give students the opportunity to place teachers in the spotlight, as they persuade others why teachers make the best presidents.

This lesson gives students the chance to demonstrate and reinforce their knowledge of sequencing. Have them role play a fantasy text to practice sequencing!

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.

Bram Stoker's Dracula has inspired feelings of fear and morbid curiosity for over a century. With this lesson plan, your students will get a taste of the literary work while learning about the myth behind vampires.

Young writers will learn to manipulate and combine sentences with conjunctions and adverb phrases. This skill helps students understand that crafting sentences is a creative and artistic process.

Could there be a pot of gold waiting for you at the end of that rainbow? Or is it hiding elsewhere? In this St. Patrick's Day lesson plan, students will write about what they would do if they found a pot of gold.

In this lesson, students use highlighters, graphic organizers, and a classic fable to exercise their understanding of key details and main idea in a text. They will use manipulatives to promote visual and kinetic learning styles.

What adventures can a reindeer, candy cane, and a snowman embark on? Let’s find out! In this writing lesson, students will write a Christmas-themed narrative incorporating characters, setting, problem, and solution.

Knowing how to write an effective persuasive letter is a powerful tool. Students will learn how to advocate for their ideas by planning and drafting a well-supported persuasive letter on an issue of their choice.

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.

Strong narratives have clear sequences of events. Through this lesson, students plan out what will happen in their story before they start writing their own engaging narratives.

Help your students learn how to move smoothly between ideas and paragraphs using transition words and phrases. Young writers will use real texts as mentors as they study how authors use words to transition between ideas and support their claims. As a result, they will have a word bank to use in their own writing.

What is the intention of an indentation within a paragraph? Within this lesson, students will explore the reasons why we indent. They’ll categorize and classify content to construct paragraphs that include indentations.

Second graders love field trips and sharing their opinions! This fun lesson combines both, as students must convince their teacher to take them on a field trip by practicing their opinion writing and using paragraph structure.

Understanding the big idea of a nonfiction text and being able to write a succinct summary are key fourth grade skills. This lesson focuses on summarizing a nonfiction passage in 3-4 sentences.

This lesson will inspire your students to focus on the people, pets, things, places, and ideas that mean the most to them! Your students will practice writing in this heartfelt lesson.

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.

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.

Hone your students' close reading skills by using this interesting and fun lesson that teaches your class survival skills in an informational text.

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.

Making mistakes helps us learn! Your students will flex their analytical muscles to pinpoint errors in multiplication problems using arrays. Use the lesson on its own or as support to Base Ten Arrays for Multi-Digit Multiplication.

When your students make connections to their personal lives, their writing will flourish! Use this lesson plan as a springboard to helping students plan and develop their own personal narratives.

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.

Text formatting can add a lot of richness to how information is explained. In this lesson students will explore the organization of nonfiction texts and go on a scavenger hunt for different kinds of text formatting features.

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.

St. Patrick's Day is a widely popular holiday all over the world. Teach your students about some interesting traditions as they write an informative text about how St. Patrick's Day is celebrated.

This lesson teaches kids all about Malcolm X and how his childhood influenced him to become one of America's most well known, controversial, and revolutionary figures. First kids will listen to a read-aloud authored by Malcolm X's daughter, Ilyasah Shabazz, and then they will write an informative paragraph.

Students will have the opportunity to fine-tune their writing by adding, deleting, or reworking content in their informational essay drafts. They’ll use a checklist to guide this critical step in the writing process.