If young writers can learn how to write a solid paragraph, then they have the building blocks of an essay. In this lesson, students will study paragraph structure and practice organizing ideas into paragraphs.

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.

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.

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!

Use this lesson to help your ELs understand main idea and supporting details in the context of sentences and paragraphs. It can be a stand-alone lesson or a support lesson to the Power Reading lesson.

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.

Marie Curie’s monumental achievements in chemistry and physics are remarkable. In this lesson, your students will read two accounts of her life, integrate the details, and assess the importance of having more than one source of information.

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.

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.

Nourish your child's inner writer with this lesson on three different forms of literature: poetry, prose, and drama. After going through some examples of each, students will demonstrate their knowledge by filling out bubble maps.

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.

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.

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.

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, ask students to compare and contrast two important African-American historical figures. Students will write an informational paragraph on the similarities and differences between W.E.B. Du Bois and George Washington Carver.

Get your students excited about geography with a lesson on Earth's oceans. After reading two different texts, they'll be ready to dive right into ocean paragraph writing.

Let's learn about natural disasters. After reading through some informational texts, students will use their close reading skills to answer questions about different types of disasters.

What better way to represent what you’ve learned than through an infographic? In this lesson, students read nonfiction texts then create infographics to share the main topics, key ideas, evidence, and more!

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.

Students will continue their informational writing project by organizing the information they gathered through research. They will use a graphic organizer to organize their ideas and sort their research notes into meaningful sections.

Challenge students with a discussion about prepositions and conjunctions in this lesson. Your class will write a journal entry to explain the function of the prepositions and conjunctions in a specific sentence.

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.

Help your ELs use transition words as they make predictions and summarize a short fictional text. This lesson can be used as a stand alone activity or a support lesson.

How can you see what your students are thinking while they read? Try reading response letters in your class. Students will practice formatting letters and learn to discuss their thinking about literature in writing.

Sugar skulls and fancy dress aren't all there is to the Day of the Dead. In this lesson students will learn about several societies that celebrate their dead, as well as some of the history behind the traditions of the Día de los Muertos.

Condense and combine! In this lesson, students will learn how to combine words to form contractions and hyphenated compound words. Spelling becomes easy when it’s just a matter of pairing words up!

Help ELs learn how to compare and contrast multiple nonfiction resources, using transition words to support their understanding. It can be a stand-alone lesson or support for the lesson Compare and Contrast Information Across Sources.

Teach your students the importance of text features with informational readings about endangered species around the world. This lesson on wildlife doubles as a great way for young learners to hone their reading comprehension skills.

Being able to express and support opinions is greatly beneficial for young learners. This lesson plan includes fun exercises to help students learn about opinions and write supporting statements for their own opinions.

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.