Curated OER
Comprehension Skills: Picture, Question and Summarize Using Fiction Stories
Students build a variety of comprehension skills through the nine lessons of this unit. Picturing events, monitoring understanding during reading, forming questions, and summarizing stories form the core of the lessons being taught...
Curated OER
Summarization Safari
Young scholars summarize a piece of fiction text. After reviewing the correct way to question while reading, students independently read a short story. They complete a summary organizer using the five Ws outlined by the instructor during...
Curated OER
Character Baseball Cards
Create baseball cards for literary characters with this lesson plan. It introduces students to baseball cards, their components (stats, picture, etc.), and prompts them to draft and publish their own cards based on figures from...
Curated OER
Ready Set Go Woah: KWL for Ender's Game
Readers of Orson Scott Card's award-winning science fiction novel, Ender's Game use the provided KWL worksheet to list what they already know about war, what they think they will learn in reading the book, the new information they...
Tell City Schools
The Cay
Support your instruction of The Cay by Theodore Taylor with this extensive unit of materials. Provided here are prereading activities, worksheets and discussion questions for the entire book, and reading quizzes that you can use to check...
Curated OER
Sherlock Holmes: Teaching English Through Detective Fiction
Students read examples of mysteries and detective fiction. With a focus on Sherlock Holmes, they are introduced to the techniques for reading properly. In groups, they define new vocabulary, make predictions and summarize the stories. ...
Curated OER
The Tell-Tale Heart
Readers listen and critically read fictional prose to answer prediction questions at designated stopping points, and then they give a summary of the short story. This lesson is ideal for English language learners developing English...
iCivics
Limiting Government
While this lesson includes several nice worksheets to identify and discuss the various limits on government (i.e. a constitution, the rule of law, separation of powers, consent of the governed, etc.), its main value lies in a case study...
Curated OER
Strength in Summarizing
Third graders practice summarizing passages while creating a fishbone map of important details in non-fiction text. They examine how to tell the difference between important and less important details by highlighting them in reading...
Curated OER
Pigging Out on Reading Comprehension
Students summarize a piece of fiction text. After reviewing the correct way to read in order to summarize, students independently read the story "Pig in a Bag." They write a summary paragraph using the process outlined by the instructor...
Curated OER
My Secret War: Lesson 4
Fifth graders write a speech. In this history lesson, 5th graders define the word infamy and listen to a speech by FDR. Students work in groups to summarize his speech and rewrite sections of the speech.
Curated OER
Give Me the Facts!
Pupils study how to summarize a reading passage to improve their comprehension. They read a non-fiction passage and use five steps to summarize it while working in groups of three. Next, as class, they decide which group provided the...
Curated OER
Super Summarizers
Pupils practice summarizing passages which they read silently in order to remember what they read. They follow steps for summarizing by highlighting the important details, removing the less important ones, and retelling they highlights...
Curated OER
How to Write a Summary of a Book
Learners explore ways to write book summaries. In this summary writing instructional activity, students discover the steps for writing summaries of fictional books.
Curated OER
Main Idea- Fiction
Eighth graders investigate the concept of main idea and supporting details, and how they are used in the genre of fiction. In this literacy lesson, 8th graders listen to a fictional passage and take notes on the characters, setting,...
Curated OER
Rachel's Life is in a Hole
Explore how lack of access to water impacts peoples' lives in poor countries. Through text reading and discussion, middle schoolers are presented with the story of a young girl who lives and functions with limited water resources. They...
Curated OER
Researching the Past
Learners research the western movement in order to learn note taking strategies with nonfiction texts. They use the Internet to search for important information about the western movement using the Cornell Notes note-taking system. They...
Curated OER
Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales
A thorough lesson introduces learners to Hans Christian Andersen, the nineteenth-century author who created wonderful tales. They read the original texts of several of his stories, including "The Ugly Duckling," "The Little Mermaid,"...
Curated OER
Creating Comic Strips
Students recognize the elements needed to create a comic strip. In this comic strip instructional activity, student understand that comic strips need words and pictures. Students find differences and similarities in comic strips....
Curated OER
What Do We Owe To Thoreau?
Students use this design as an electronic reading and writing guide to Henry David Thoreau's famous essay, "On Civil Disobedience." They use activities to familiarize students with the political issues of Thoreau's time. Comprehension...
Curated OER
Harry Potter And The Prisoner of Azkaban: KWHL Strategy
J.K. Rowling's world of wizards and magic focuses on some topics that relate to our own society, especially in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Have kids complete a KWHL chart (what they know, what they want to know, how...
Schmoop
ELA.CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.9-10.2
Although the ideas on how to implement the skill RI.9-10.2 are lacking, the assessment would work well for challenging learners to summarize, and identify the main ideas of presidential speeches that are of similar topics. One could use...
Curated OER
Summarizing Key Information
Students summarize information. In this language arts lesson, students summarize information from a fictional text. Students read a folktale and summarize the story.
Curated OER
Historical Fiction: Persuasive Presentation
Fifth graders read a book addressing a specific historical time period that was chosen by their working group. They complete journal entries as they read the book. They create a group PowerPoint explaining the personal point of view and...