Students observe and demonstrate the process of summarizing text. As a class they read and discuss a poster of the rules for summarization, then silently a page from the book "Let's Celebrate Earth Day." Students then summarize the...

Scholars delve into an informational text with the help of four pages that focus on the author's purpose, vocabulary words, summarization, and main idea.

Can your class sum up a text in a few sentences? Help them build this skill by starting nice and slow. For this summarizing activity, the teacher marks the main ideas with sticky notes. Learners read and reread the text, pausing at the...

Each presidential election year, the debate about the electoral college rages. Michael C. Maibach's "A Defense of the Electoral College" offers young political scientists an opportunity to examine a reasoned argument for why the...

Encourage your young citizens to make a difference. Using Tyson Miller's Dream of a Nation: Inspiring Ideas for a Better America as a starting point, class members watch documentaries, investigate issues, and then write letters to...

In this literacy worksheet, 5th graders find the main idea, put the words into the correct sentences, and read the paragraph to increase reading comprehension.

Use comic strips to teach sequencing in narrative poetry. As homework, each class member selects a comic strip with 4-8 frames, cuts the frames apart, places the pieces in an envelope, and brings the envelope to class. Class members swap...

Does your class know the history behind today's telephone? They will after reading a very interesting one-page informational passage. They'll learn all about the way phones have progressed to the amazing devices they've become as they...

Why do people write books? Pupils discover how to identify the author's viewpoint. They read non-fiction passages their instructor selects (the plan has the class look at nonfiction children's picture books), and then identify the...

Learners observe and demonstrate the strategy of summarizing the main idea. They discuss six rules of summarizing, and observe the teacher summarizing the first chapter of the novel "The Incredible Journey." Students then read chapter...

Students make predictions about the coming up chapter in their book. Students are introduced to new vocabulary words and definition for this new chapter. Students create a table where they can input the new vocabulary word, definition...

Lesson 10 in a series of human rights lessons focuses on the skills of finding evidence and summarizing. Your young readers work to compare the two texts they have read in this unit: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights...

Although this is part of a series, lesson plan nine has your class take a break from their close study of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) text to read the firsthand account “Teaching Nepalis to Read, Plant, and...

Then and now. Scholars complete an end of unit assessment covering The Inuit Thought of It by comparing past and modern day life for the Inuit. They complete a main idea graphic organizer, analyze key terms, and write a summary...

A three-minute exercise warms-up scholars' writing abilities in order to follow a writing process that ends in an essay. The essay's topic is a barrier and the values used to break it. Four steps include choosing a topic,...

As scholars begin reading more difficult text, they need to acquire an arsenal of comprehension strategies. Here are few helpful ones to guide new readers through the informational text About Trees, which is linked here for...

Students 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...

Student gains insight into the culture of Japan. They articulate the main ideas and supporting details, also they create a "glimpse of Japan" with an illustrated and written summary of the main idea and four supporting details from the...

Upper elementary and middle school writers learn how to craft an expository paragraph by following the six steps detailed in a 48-page instructional guide. Learners learn how to write six different types of informational paragraphs:...

With the help of a prewriting activity, scholars reserach a topic and compose an expository essay to show what they know about a topic of their choice. 

How do writers introduce and develop the central ideas in a text? To answer this question, ninth graders closely examine "The Age of Honey," the opening chapter in Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos' Sugar Changed the World: A Story of...

Use the fairy tale Rumpelstiltskin to teach your third grade class about descriptive writing. Following a teacher read-aloud of the story, the class brainstorms a list of adjectives describing the main character. Students use this list...

Make a study of the First Amendment and its relationship to freedom. Pupils rewrite the amendment and discuss the central idea before focusing on a specific phrase. After discussing, class members write a journal entry about the included...

Neighborhood and community is the theme of a unit comprised of extra support lessons. Following practice pages and a teach, blend, guided practice, practice/apply routine, the series of lessons provide additional reinforcement...