Have your class participate in an interview activity using an informational text about the Amazon. After reading a Cultural Connections story about a person from the Amazon, middle schoolers write interview questions based on the text....

Research the lives of famous women in this social studies lesson plan. Middle schoolers use various sources to research a famous woman and create a presentation about the accomplishments of the woman. They can find the central idea...

Finding the central idea is the focus of this lesson. Middle schoolers write descriptions of different animals using details and descriptive language. They watch a video of kids using descriptive language, and then use showing language...

Poems For Two Voices are a great resource in any language arts classroom, whether you are studying poetry or not. Focusing on The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, this lesson plan prompts young authors to write a Poem For...

Examine the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. After reading an article from the New York Times and exploring the author's word choice, young readers find the central idea in the text and work on researching...

Where the Read Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls is rich with themes relating to love and family. Help your class to understand these themes with the series of reading activities included in this unit outline. Readers can keep a journal to...

Especially critical following a series of shootings in schools, theaters, and religious buildings, it's safe to say that we need to evaluate the current laws on gun control. Eighth graders read a New York Times article in order to better...

Learners identify main idea of passages, reading selections, and cartoons.

Fourth graders locate information to describe what Indians gathered and how they sustained life. They use 5 resources, select a paragraph from each and state the main idea and supporting details.

Students complete activities with the book Freckle Juice by Judy Blume. In this literature instructional activity, students read chapter one and brainstorm adjectives for the four main characters. They make a page of vocabulary...

Students complete activities to learn how to develop story ideas in journalistic writing. In this story ideas lesson plan, students learn news value judging criteria, identify language to ask beat sources for story ideas, distinguish...

Where is Henry Huggins? Class members craft playing cards for a memory game. One side features a description or an illustration of a memorable scene, the title of the book and the names of major characters, or a description about...

Explore the Ukraine through a reading of The Mitten. Readers will determine the sequence of events, cause and effect, make predictions, and find the main idea of the story. They also use math skills to make charts and graphs. Finally,...

Learners observe and demonstrate the steps to identifying the main ideas of a text. They listen to the teacher read a paragraph and model the steps of summarizing the main idea. Students then independently read a different paragraph...

In this comprehension review for fifth grade worksheet, 5th graders answer 9 multiple choice questions in standardized test format about the main idea and details of two passages.

Give this literacy instructional activity to your beginning readers to help them draw out key details and retell in their own words. They read a short fantasy story about a bear in space which includes dialogue, onomatopoeia, and a...

Pitch your best news story to your news team, or the peers in your journalism class, with a lesson about finding, reporting, and presenting a story. After watching clips of different examples, as well as strategies for finding...

Make sure your writers have the buns and the meat in their paragraph burgers with paragraph exercises. The resource gradually leads up to individuals writing their own paragraphs, starting with identification exercises, moving on to...

Set a purpose for reading informational texts with this reading lesson. To find the central idea of a text, young readers turn titles and subtitles into questions to help them understand the text. They complete a T-chart for the lesson,...

Examine the process of summarizing a piece of text using the book So You Want to Be a President? Kids review the definitions for main idea, topic sentences, superordinate terms, and supporting details. Next, they work in small...

Third graders understand how to find the theme of a fable. In this theme lesson, 3rd graders use graphic organizers to record the events of a fable. Students use that information to determine the lesson of the story. Students do a guided...

Third graders examine how finding the main ideas and summarizing increases their reading comprehension. They read "The Sea in Danger" while applying the six rules of summarization in a modeled lesson. Next, working in small groups, they...

Fourth graders comprehend what they are reading. An effective strategy for comprehension is summarization. They single out and explaining the main ideas of a passage. Students find a sentence or rewrite their own that covers...

Young scholars take notes from oral readings and lectures to create a summary of the material. They use different sizes of post-it notes to complete the activity. They practice pulling the main ideas out of the given material.