Polk Bros Foundation
How to Summarize a Non-Fiction Passage
After reading a text, one way to find out how much your class comprehended is to ask your pupils to summarize. This worksheet helps class members prepare for writing a summary of a nonfiction text. They note down the topic, up to eight...
Curated OER
Writing Informal and Formal Letters
An informal/formal letters worksheet asks pupils to label the 15 greetings, salutations, and wording of passages from sample letters as being examples of either informal or formal writing.
Curated OER
Using Details from Text to Identify Author's Purpose
Explore writing techniques by analyzing newspapers and magazines with middle schoolers. They will collaborate in small groups to read local news stories and identify the main ideas and author's intent. They also utilize an information...
Curated OER
Discovering Japan Through Cooperative Research
Search a variety of sources to create a multimedia or book project about Japan. Learners use the independent investigation method to plan and conduct research about Japan. They use the information they discover to create a computer book...
National Math + Science Initative
Reading an Informational Text: "It All Started with Sputnik"
Sputnik was one of the greatest scientific advancements of the 1950s, and this reading lesson does it justice. Pupils start off with pre-reading questions and a video. They then read an excerpt from an article, which is accompanied by...
Polk Bros Foundation
Meet the Nonfiction Main Idea Challenge
Help your class develop the ability to determine a main idea with a packet of materials that you can introduce and use over a period of time. The packet includes some information for the teacher and rationale for the exercises. There are...
Curated OER
Indigenous People Day
Do you know why we celebrate the International Day of the World's Indigenous People? Did you even know we celebrate this day? After reading a short passage about this international celebration, scholars answer true or false questions,...
Curated OER
Breaking News English: Apple Suing Samsung
Why is Apple suing Samsung? Give your English language learners a bit of reading comprehension practice. First, they read the short passage provided, and then they complete 10 activities. There are true or false questions, matching...
Curated OER
Paraphrasing-Timbuktu in Your Own Words
How do you paraphrase information? Part of plagiarizing is taking information word for word and using it in your writing. Teach your writers how to paragraphs correctly to avoid this! They watch a QuickTime video on Timbuktu and...
Curated OER
Using Compare and Contrast Key Words
Compare and contrast while challenging your class with this higher-level thinking and reading comprehension lesson. After observing the teacher model comparing and contrasting bats and birds, learners read passages about two towns. They...
Read Works
Signal Words in Expository Text
Signal words are one way that authors make the relationships between their ideas clear. Allow your learners the chance to investigate cause and effect in texts by identifying signal words. They locate and analyze cause-and-effect...
Curated OER
How Do Adjectives Improve Writing?
Using adjectives to create vivid descriptions is the focus of exercises in this resource. A cloze reading activity asks class members to add missing adjectives to passages from Mark Teague's The Lost and Found. They then read Teague's...
Polk Bros Foundation
Comprehensive Nonfiction Reading Questions
Analyze any nonfiction text with the set of questions on this sheet. Class members practice inferring by noting the main idea and purpose of a passage. They also analyze an opinion in the passage and write a brief summary. See the...
Curated OER
Yellowstone
As a motivating reading experience, this passage on Yellowstone National Park should appeal to learners of all ages. This 10 question worksheet has both comprehension and vocabulary activities. It could be used for ESL with older...
Aspen Institute
The Voice That Challenged a Nation
Included here are step-by-step instructions for conducting a close reading of The Voice That Challenged a Nation by Russell Freedman. After an individual and class reading, class members read carefully through the text excerpt,...
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Strategy 3: Using Graphic Organizers Implementation Guide
Whether or not you are new to using graphic organizers with informational or expository text, the materials in this guide will prove useful.
Curated OER
Oliver Twist Goes to Hollywood
How does Oliver Twist, the novel written by Charles Dickens, compare with its screenplay adaptation? Although the activity doesn't require learners to have read the novel, the similarities and differences of the highlighted passages...
Louisiana Department of Education
Hatchet
Accompany a novel study of Hatchet by Gary Paulson with a unit consisting of 16 lessons focused on physical and emotional survival. Reading the story along with a variety of informational texts, scholars compare and contrast reading...
Savvas Learning
"The Digestive Process Begins" and "Final Digestion and Absorption"
Want your class to digest text more thoroughly? Middle schoolers learn about the digestive system in the lesson and reinforce informational text reading skills through a variety of strategies. They engage in a close reading approach,...
Curated OER
Performance-Based Assessment Practice Test (Grade 6 ELA/Literacy)
Keep an eye on the growth of your sixth graders' reading and writing skills with the help of this practice Common Core assessment. Working their way through the six included fiction and nonfiction reading passages, learners answer a...
Curated OER
Why Do Authors Write?
Sixth graders use short reading passages to identify, explain, and discuss the author's purpose for writing. After a lecture/demo, they utilize a graphic organizer embedded in this plan to organize their writing ideas.
Curated OER
Can you Follow Me? Conventions
Use the present tense to create written assignments. Critical thinkers take a passage written in past or future tense and rewrite it in present tense. They then write a set of instructions in present tense.
Curated OER
The Powers That Be
Students investigate past energy legislation, then write letters to Congress from the perspective of citizens trying to influence the original passage of these bills. Each small group does their research using a website imbedded in this...
Curated OER
An Antidote to Plagiarism
Young scholars discover how to write a research paper without directly copying written material. They read a passage, then record on the board any words that are new for them. They define these words, then organize their facts to create...