Article provides excellent tips and strategies for building comprehension and critical thinking skills in Social Studies. It describes some of the challenges students have with reading and understanding their textbooks.

This comprehensive lesson plan uses Julius Caesar to teach multiple author tools such as figurative language and foreshadowing. Included are reproducibles, activities for each act, lesson plan extensions, ideas for different learning...

This site offers links to several lesson plans for teaching main ideas to first and second graders; it also provides and explains some activities for teaching the main idea to first graders.

Links to 44 lessons and activities that build student skills in standard SL.3.2: Determine the main ideas and supporting details of a text read aloud or information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually,...

Explore a list of simple things that principals can do to help all children learn to read. Come and learn more about the collaboration process with school administrators, teachers and staff.

English Campus is an excellent site for Chinese speakers learning English. It includes seven channels - Watch, Read, Practice, Play, Create, Meet, and a Teachers' Corner. Learn by playing word and grammar games, watching movies and...

This series of 12 downloadable activities teach students some basics of story writing, using books or videos from the PBS "Arthur" series as a springboard. Activities include creating story maps, asking questions about characters and...

In this instructional resource, students will learn more about summarizing texts. Worksheets and PowerPoint lessons are provided to reinforce understanding about ways to summarize nonfiction texts and to identify main ideas. This module...

Reading 101 is a self-paced professional development course for K-3 teachers. It presents some of the core information that teachers need to help young children learn to read and write well and to support the children who struggle. The...

This comprehensive teacher's guide for the book "Zathura" by Chris Van Allsburg provides us with an opportunity to examine how writers blend scientific information with a fictional story.

Extensive site for teaching Spanish-speaking ELL. The theme of this unit is animals. Exercise follows short reading. Instructions are in Spanish; exercise in English.

Pre-reading activities can engage student interest, activate prior knowledge, or pre-teach potentially difficult concepts and vocabulary. They also offer a great opportunity to introduce comprehension components such as cause and effect,...

Extensive site for teaching Spanish-speaking ELLs about words used to describe homes and the things found in them. Instructions are in Spanish; exercises in English.

A teacher created lesson plan to help students conquer how to make connections between directions in an effort to create something. This activity will have students sharing recipes and understanding why recipes should be followed in...

This is a lesson plan for teaching storytelling and/or fables to first graders including listening, reading, lesson learned (moral), and follow up ideas.

This collection of storytelling activities-developed by storyteller/author Heather Forest for her storytelling workshops with students, teachers, and librarians-can be expanded by educators into language arts lesson plans to support...