Curated OER
Mapping Out the Story
Discuss the reading comprehension strategy of summarization with your elementary schoolers! They read a chapter from their social studies textbook, Regions Near and Far, and create a map, or word web, for the chapter. They identify...
Curated OER
Hide and Seek Vocabulary!
Third graders practice word recognition and vocabulary building. They find word cards in the classroom. Then they practice reading the words and using them in sentences. Additional practice is gained by writing the words and using them...
California Education Partners
Eleven
It is difficult to articulate how growing up feels as accurately and beautifully as Sandra Cisneros does in her short story "Eleven." After seventh graders read the story and note the author's use of figurative language, they respond to...
California Education Partners
Grapes of Wrath
To demonstrate their ability to comprehend complex text, individuals analyze the details, syntax, and diction John Steinbeck uses in a passage from The Grapes of Wrath to reveal the develop and evolution of Mae's character.
California Education Partners
The Road Not Taken
An effective lesson plan truly can make all the difference. Seventh graders read, analyze, and annotate Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" before writing an essay about what they believe to be the theme of the iconic poem.
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 12: Story Event
Focus on plot and the impact-specific events in The Cay. Class members use their double-entry journals, created in a previous lesson in this series, to record their thinking about the guiding question as they read chapters 15 through 17....
California Education Partners
Hope Despair Memory
Elie Wiesel's "Hope, Despair and Memory" provides ninth graders an opportunity to demonstrate their ability to analyze complex text. Individuals craft an essay that draws evidence from the text of the speech to show how Wiesel develops...
Curated OER
A Season for Chapters
Art, music, poetry, and the beauty of the seasons is what you'll find in this very nice unit idea. You can use any of the suggested books and activities to engage your second graders in an exploration of the changes that take place...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Comprehension: Monitoring for Understanding, Simple Summary
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...
University of North Carolina
Reading Aloud
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...
EngageNY
Analyzing Point of View: Inferring about the Natural Disaster in Eight Days
Who is telling the story? Readers take a look at the text Eight Days to determine if the story is told in first or third person. They then discuss in groups and complete a shared writing activity to describe how the narrator's point of...
Cleburne Independent School District
Grade 6 English Language Arts and Readiness: Persuasive
What is the best way to compare and contrast viewpoints on the same topic? A persuasive writing unit plan addresses targeted skills, vocabulary, instructional strategies, and suggested resources that would be perfect for developing writers.
Curated OER
Phineas Gage: Questioning Strategy
Focus on chapter two of Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science with a questioning activity. After teaching and modeling several types of questions, learners work with partners and then independently to answer and...
Santa Ana Unified School District
The Power of Point of View
Sometimes a whole story can change based on the perspective of the person telling it. Practice identifying and analyzing point of view in various reading passages and writing assignments with a language arts packet, complete with Common...
Trinity University
Who Am I? Using Personal Narrative to Reflect on Identity
Who am I? Pupils work to answer this question through a unit that explores personal narratives and identity. Exit tickets for activities that examine different poems, short stories, and autobiographical writing serve as prewriting for...
Curated OER
Study Guide for Missing May
Use this comprehensive packet to accompany a study of Missing May by Cynthia Rylant. Starting out with a brief author biography and background information about the novel, this guide includes materials to use throughout the entire novel....
University of North Carolina
Annotated Bibliographies
When researchers write a paper, they become curators of information. It's their job to determine the best sources of information on a topic and use those sources to inform their writing. As part of a larger series, a handout on annotated...
City College of San Francisco
Making Inferences: Reading Between the Lines
Have you ever read part of a story and had to figure out what the rest was about? Practice making inferences with several short passages and multiple choice questions.
Institute for Excellence in Writing
A Writer’s Guide to Powerful Paragraphs
When it comes to teaching writing, it helps to start small. A supplementary guide to A Writer's Guide to Powerful Paragraphs provides suggested activities to help writers craft a variety of paragraphs. Each assignment covers a...
Novelinks
The Lightning Thief: Concept/Vocabulary Analysis
Before you begin reading Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan, read over this comprehensive handout that gives you a plethora of information regarding the story's summary, organizational structure, central...
University of North Carolina
Qualifiers
A lot of writers really struggle very much with adding a lot of qualifiers and intensifiers in their writing. Part of a larger series to improve writing skills, a handout on the topic provides tips to help reduce a reliance on these...
Odell Education
Reading Closely for Textual Details: "And I am willing to lay down all my joys in this life..."
Look closely, some details are hidden! Scholars learn how to find attributes by first examining characteristics in illustrations and then move to locating details in text with close reading. The teacher models good practices for...
EngageNY
Building Background Knowledge and Summarizing: “Refugees: Who, Where, Why” Part 2
What are some universal aspects of refugees' experiences worldwide and throughout history? Scholars read the text "Refugees: Who, Where, Why" and create two class anchor charts. Finally, they each write a paragraph that provides an...
EngageNY
Logic and Argument: Evaluating the Argument in “Beyond the Brain”
The brain is not the mind. Scholars explore the claim by reading an informational article about neuroscience research, "Beyond the Brain." As they read, they answer text-dependent questions and complete an anchor chart to evaluate...