Turn your passive readers into active readers with an engaging lesson on reading informational text. Focused on compare and contrast structured essays, the activity prompts elementary learners to jot down questions and think-aloud...

Let's race to the finish line. Scholars read an informational text about a chosen athlete. While reading, they add evidence and reasons to a graphic organizer to support their opinions about how their athlete broke barriers. 

Video games may not be so bad after all. As scholars read the text "The Many Benefits, for Kids, of Playing Video Games," they summarize the gist in their researchers' notebooks. Next, pupils draft supporting research questions based on...

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...

Read informational text which relays how medical care differs around the globe and throughout history. There are three separate lessons, each focused on a particular case study, regional medical availability, and cultural norms. Learners...

A read-aloud anthology explores our solar system and beyond. Informational texts about astronomy invite pupils to discuss readings. Extension activities examine vocabulary, sayings, and phrases. Scholars work through the writing process...

Find the main idea in an informational text with a versatile lesson. Three levels of differentiation help you implement the strategy in any age or class level, based on the ability and objectives of your learners.

What's the difference between summarizing and paraphrasing? Show class members how to find the main ideas from informational text and condense it, restate it, or quote it directly with a series of educational activities based...

Work on identifying text structure with this thorough worksheet. After studying a diagram depicting six different text structures (compare/contrast, spatial, chronological, problem and solution, cause and effect, and order of...

Explore how illustrations add to a story. Young learners will look at picture books to see how the pictures tell the story. They create illustrations to go with a chosen story, and then flip the activity so they have to write a story to...

Give each learner a newspaper for this lesson! As a group, read select editorials and discuss them with your class. Are these articles informational or persuasive? Cut out select editorials and have learners identify the purpose of each...

Warning: reading your paper aloud may cause bystanders to think you're talking to yourself. However, as the 14th installment of 24 in the Writing the Paper series from UNC explains, it is one of the best strategies for revision. Through...

A thorough resource for intermediate English learners addresses reading comprehension of informational texts, adjective forms, vocabulary acquisition, and writing in a journalistic style. Specifically, the class reads about stem cell...

Can you actually get lost in a corn maze? Kids read how one family was so lost that they called 911 for help. An interesting piece of informational text put out by the New York Times is here to entertain and educate. As they read the...

A current and engaging informational text with some superb scaffolding activities, this six paragraph article discusses the release of the iPad from Apple, eBooks, and the history of reading and writing materials. After reading the...

Expose your class to Waiting for the Biblioburro, narrative nonfiction that will act as the bridge between ficiton and informational texts to come. Class members do a close reading of the text, looking at excerpts instead of the whole...

Show your scholars that they make inferences every day and might not even know it. Through scaffolded instruction, they break down the process of drawing information from context. Using example sentences and didactic questioning,...

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...

If you're looking for a detailed lesson on event sequencing from informational text, you've found it. There is an entire script for you to draw from as you explore order of events and sequence words. Scaffolding is key here; learners...

Refugee & Immigrant Transitions is an organization that helps newcomers adjust to life in the United States through education and community leadership opportunities. As part of a mid-unit assessment, pupils independently read a...

Children's education doesn't have to end when they leave the classroom. Support parents with imporving their children's reading comprehension skills at home with this list of guiding questions.

A Student Reader focuses on Civil Rights leaders. Scholars read or listen to an informational text about Susuan B. Anthony, Mary McLeod Bethune, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Robinson, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez, and...

What should readers do to prepare for reading an informational text? What should they do during their reading? What should they do after completing such a text? Introduce your pupils to reading strategies and techniques to gain meaning...

Paired reading passages frequently appear on standardized exams, but finding text sets to use in the classroom is sometimes a challenge. A lesson plan on using paired texts includes a selection of passages and a graphic organizer for...