English Language Arts Guided Lessons

In kindergarten, kids are piecing together all the words and letters they can decode in order to build stronger reading fluency. This is why their understanding of sight words, or commonly occurring words, is so important. This guided lesson familiarizes first graders with the sight words they will most frequently encounter in texts, boosting their decoding and comprehension skills.

Learning how to read fluently includes more than just piecing letters together to form words. Kids also have to read from left to right and notice spacing between words. Help your child become a fluent reader by tackling these skills.

In this lesson, preschoolers focus on the alphabet by learning the letters L, R, and K. Kids are guided through the classic children's story of The Lion and the Rat, with an accompanying curriculum that targets each child's understanding of the unique sounds these letters make. Seeing the letters in a fun, engaging environment also reinforces the letter recognition skills crucial for early readers.

This guided lesson in the letters P, W and N will help kids to identify the letters, and also reinforces the sound that each letter makes. The classic story of The Three Little Pigs provides important context for learning these three letters, in addition to a fun, narrative environment in which to learn them. Don't miss out on the accompanying printables below.

Grammar is an essential part of the second grade language arts curriculum. This guided lesson teaches second graders how to properly use collective nouns, additonal nouns and verbs, and provides plenty of opportunities to practice these grammar rules in context. For more important practice with nouns and verbs, download and print the grammar worksheets that we suggest alongside this lesson.

Spelling is a core language arts skill in the third grade curriculum. You can support kids' spelling skills with this guided lesson that features targeted instruction in common spelling patterns, as well as plenty of chances to practice. The content of this lesson was created by our team of teachers and curriculum experts. For even more spelling practice, consider downloading and printing our recommended spelling worksheets.

Second grade phonics covers more advanced rules that build upon kids' foundational reading skills, such as vowel pairs (ai, ee, ea, oo), long and short vowels, and the silent E. This guided lesson covers these three areas in order to enhance kids' skills with decoding more challenging texts. You can boost reading fluency further by printing the phonics worksheets that go with this lesson.

Does your child know the story "How the Camel Got His Hump"? If she does, she might also know the letters C, H and Z! This guided lesson uses the famous story of the camel to teach the letter C, H and Z. Not only does this boost letter recogntion and phonics skills, but working with a familiar story can give confidence to early readers.

Bag, cat and cap are all examples of short A words that kindergarteners will be learning to read this year. You can support this learning with a guided exploration of the short A sound. Kids will be taught how to identify the short A within text, in addition to the corresponding sound. Check out our short A printables for more phonics practice.

This lesson guides students in understanding letter-sound correspondence for consonants M, S, B, R, P, K, T, G, F, L. It also introduces other techniques for pronouncing the most frequent sounds that these consonants make, including sound-to-letter correspondence and sound-to-image correspondence. This will help kindergarteners to read more fluently, with enhanced understanding of new texts. The lesson also engages listening skills that are a crucial part of the kindergarten curriculum.

The letters G, B and E are heavily featured in the classic tale of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears". This guided lesson uses the story to teach the letters G, B and E in a focused and fun narrative format. Using a story kids most already know gives them a leg up on letter recognition and boosts reading confidence. Don't miss the accompanying printables that can extend learning opportunities.

As students begin to read more sophisticated texts, understanding how authors use figurative language becomes critical. In this unit, students will revisit some of the figurative language they learned in fourth grade and also study some new ones too, including onomatopoeia, hyperbole, puns and oxymorons. Analyzing how figurative language is used in texts will help readers apply what they have learned.

Understanding the function of nouns is a crucial part of reading and writing fluency. This guided lesson focuses on the types of nouns kids are most likely to come across in third grade texts. Designed by our curriculum experts, the lesson provides grammar instruction and examples to support learning. For more practice, see the nouns worksheets recommended to go along with this lesson.

Consonant-vowel-consonant or CVC words include examples such as paw, cow and pop. Identifying these words and understanding the sound that they make is crucial to building reading fluency. This guided lesson provides practice with CVC words by focusing on their intial, medial and ending sounds. You can boost learning with our supplemental worksheets that offer more practice with CVC words.

Teaching kids to blend, or combine, sounds in order to pronounce new words is an important element to first grade reading. Segmenting the sounds that make up a word, and then blending those sounds to pronounce them correctly, can be a tricky skill to master. This lesson helps take first graders through this process, with guided practice and helpful examples.

As students become more sophisticated writers, they begin to understand that words have different “jobs” in a sentence. These jobs can be thought of as parts of speech. In this word study unit, students will learn about the work that transition words, prepositions, verbs, adverbs and adjectives do. Students will also explore how certain kinds of words work together, like verbs and adverbs.

This literature lesson guides kids towards a deeper understanding of second grade texts through an exploration of character, setting, and plot. Kids will be challenged to answer the who, what, where, when and why of a story, in addition to determining the story's message. Two versions of the same story will be presented in order for second graders to see story elements in action.

Sight words, common words that help kids build reading fluency, are an important part of the kindergarten curriculum.This guided lesson introduces kids to the sight words and, at, he, on, it, like, go, the, to, you, of, and said. Kids are tasked with identifying the words and understanding the sound that each word makes. Check out the accompanying worksheets at the end of the lesson.

"Anansi and the Turtle", a popular story for boys and girls, gives kids a chance to practice the letters A, T, Y and O in this guided lesson. Kids will practice both alphabet and phonics skills, as they work on identifying these letters in the story and understanding the sounds they represent. Targeted practice such as this helps with retention of these skills, as preschoolers begin their journey towards reading mastery.

This word play lesson teaches second graders about diphthongs (ow, ou, oi, oy and ew words) and tricky plural nouns (geese, feet, mice). It also introduces kids to the bossy R rule, which states that when the letter r follows a vowel it changes the way the word is pronouced, for example far, car, and fur. These rules can help second graders advance their reading fluency and spelling skills.

Vocabulary development helps second graders advance their reading and writing skills. This guided lesson uses exercises and techniques targeted to building vocabulary. Kids will be tasked with using descriptive adjectives, distinguishing between similar verbs and adjectives, and using context clues to determine the meaning of a word phrase. For more vocabulary boosters, check out the worksheets that align with this lesson.

Learning silent E rules is one of the trickiest concepts for early readers. Words such as cube/cub, robe/rob and tube/tub are particularly confusing to decipher. How can one little letter make so much of a difference? This lesson can help smooth the way with guided exercises and examples that bolster your student's ability to recognize, understand and read the letter E.

Third grade writers will be tasked with writing longer and more complicated sentences. This guided lesson in understanding, constructing and punctuating sentences can support kids as they learn to build bigger and better sentences in their writing. Grammar instruction and practical examples were written by our curriculum experts, complete with a list of recommended building sentence worksheets for third graders.

Learning certain patterns and word structures can be extremely helpful in learning to spell words correctly. This series of activities and exercises walk students through some of the most common patterns, like double consonants, homophones and contractions where they will have the opportunity to learn and practice spelling more difficult words. Students will also attack some more commonly misspelled words in the English language.

Sight words are commonly founds words that are not easy to decode because they don't follow set phonics rules (and must be learned by sight). Examples of sight words commonly found in first grade texts are would, thank, rain, and should. This guided lesson introduces first grader readers to even more sight words to help boost their comprehension and fluency.

The story "My Shadow" provides the backdrop for this guided lesson on the letters I, M and J. Learning to read letter by letter allows children to focus not only on letter recognition, but on the sounds that the letters make in context. This technique provides the building blocks for reading fluency to come in kindergarten and first grade. Kids can continue their phonics practice with the accompanying worksheets.

This year, third graders will be taking their vocabulary to new heights and exploring such concepts as metaphor, simile, hyperbole, and personification. This guided lesson in vocabulary and figurative language offers clear and practical definitions of new words and expressions, along with plenty of practice opportunities. Understanding vocabulary and figurative language deepens reading comprehension skills and enriches the writing process.

Learning common constructions for words is one way that third graders can get traction on their spelling and reading comprehension skills. This guided lesson in word structure introduces kids to the idea that most words are made up of smaller words, and provides opportunities to apply this learning with practical examples. For more printable practice with word structure, check out our recommended worksheets.

The mysterious comma is arguably the trickiest form of punctuation, which is why assigned it it’s own unit in 5th grade. As students become more sophisticated writers they craft more complex sentences. They incorporate independent phrases and clauses, generate compound sentences, and utilize transition words to combine ideas - and the exercises in this unit will teach them how to use commas correctly in each scenario.

Letter writing is an engaging and important writing format for third graders to master. You can support the development of letter writing expertise with this lesson that provides guidance on the structure and anatomy of a letter. Written by curriculum experts, this lesson will teach kids the various features that make a letter easier to read, and will also offer plenty of opportunities to practice.