Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway: Writing Expository Text Summaries
This resource presents instructional practices for writing summaries of expository text in English language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies classes.
Louisiana Department of Education
Louisiana Doe: Louisiana Believes: Ela Guidebooks: Summarizing
This strategy helps students refine their understanding of texts to meet reading expectations and prepare for writing about texts.
Louisiana Department of Education
Louisiana Doe: Louisiana Believes: Ela Guidebooks: Independent Reading Protocols
During independent reading, students read independently from either a self- or teacher-selected text and then react to the text in their learning logs using one of three protocols.
Louisiana Department of Education
Louisiana Doe: Louisiana Believes: Guide for Determining Text Complexity
An educator's guide to help determine the level of text complexity.
PBS
Pbs Learning Media: The Road to Representation Creating the Crunchy Life Kid's Series
This blog focuses on a teacher's need to fill in the gaps for reading strategies and the priority to improve comprehension and overall reading development. She explains the strategies to meet the above goals.
AdLit
Ad lit.org: Classroom Strategies: Story Maps
Story Maps are used for teaching students to work with story structure for better comprehension. This technique uses visual representations to help students organize important elements of a story. Students learn to summarize the main...
Ted Nellen
Cyber English (By Ted Nellen): Theme
This is a glossary entry for the term "Theme" including a definition and an example.
Quia
Quia: Rags to Riches: Literary Elements: Setting, Plot, and Characters
In this game, students answer questions about the story elements of setting, plot, and characters
Curated OER
Mc Graw Hill: Reading Literature: Determine Theme/central Idea
A definition of theme or central idea along with a link to a practice activity. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.2
Curated OER
Ccss Literacy E Handbook: Literature: Summarize
An explanation of summarizing a selection along with a link to a model summarizing activity.
Curated OER
Mac Millan: Story Elements: Grade 6
This learning module focuses on analyzing story elements including the order of events, character, conflict, resolution, and plot. It provides a model story with questions and answers and then a practice story with questions.
Quia
Quia: Short Story Elements: Definitions
Students can choose from three different activities while practicing story elements. Flashcards give students a chance to learn the elements and their definitions. A matching game gives students an opportunity to test their new learning,...
Quia
Quia: Reading for Facts
This interactive quiz assesses students' reading comprehension skills of informational text passages. Students will read 30 short passages and answer question about a detail for each.
Quia
Quia: Compare/contrast Character, Plot, and Setting Test
This interactive activity assesses students' understanding of the story elements. Students will read passages that include a short story and a brief drama; then students will answer assorted questions associated to each piece.
Annenberg Foundation
Annenberg Learner: Journey North: Reading Strategies: Main Ideas and Supporting Details
Learn how to identify the main ideas and supporting details in an informational text by using a list of guiding questions.
Quia
Quia: Character Terms
Complete each sentence by typing the correct character word into each box in this ten-question quiz.
Quia
Quia: Concentration
Join each story element with its definition in this online memory match game.
University of Victoria (Canada)
The U Vic Writer's Guide: Literary Term: Theme
This site provides a general description of theme, complete with a couple of examples.
Other
Reading Quest: Strategies for Reading Comprehension: Summarizing
Teach students to summarize nonfiction text with these lesson plans. Includes worksheets and activities that can be downloaded and printed.
Quia
Quia: Story Elements Practice
This series of flashcards from Quia helps students perform a quick check of their understanding of student elements, such as setting and conflict.
SMART Technologies
Smart: Making Inferences
Inferencing is finding clues and using background knowledge to determine an explanation from facts in a passage or story. It's "reading between the lines" of a story to understand what the author doesn't state.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Holt, Rinehart and Winston: Theme: The Story's Meaning and Roots [Pdf]
A PDF worksheet that provides five important questions to help you analyze theme. RL.9-10.2 and 11-12 Analyzing Theme.
Tom Richey
Slide Share: How Can I Find the Theme of a Text?
Twenty-four slides explaining what a theme is and how it can be identified in a text.
Fun Trivia
Fun Trivia: The Four Types of Writing Trivia Quiz
A fifteen-question quiz in which the reader identifies a type of writing for each situation: argumentation, exposition, narrative, or description. Correct answers are displayed once answers are submitted.