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Did you know that comparative tasks improve comprehension and help students develop higher order thinking skills? In this lesson, students will compare nonfiction texts on the same topic using Venn diagrams and performance!

This lesson helps your ELs identify nonfiction text features and explain how they enhance comprehension of the text. Use it as a stand-alone lesson or a support lesson for the Searching for Text Features lesson plan.

Keep it simple! Teach your students to write a summary using the Somebody-Wanted-But-So-Then frame for analyzing a story.

By fourth grade, most students are familiar with story elements such as setting, characters, and plot. In this lesson, students will compare and contrast the elements in two stories with similar themes.

This lesson gives students foundational skills needed to identify the author's purpose in a variety of texts. Use the lesson as a stand alone or as a pre-lesson to What Were They Thinking?

Understanding the big idea of a nonfiction text and being able to write a succinct summary are key fourth grade skills. This lesson focuses on summarizing a nonfiction passage in three to four sentences.

Characters, settings, and events, oh my! In this lesson, students will dig deeper into each of these components and learn to provide specific details from their texts.

Students will learn about three nonfiction text features: charts, graphs, and diagrams. They will analyze and interpret the information represented in these visual forms and discover how they aid in the comprehension of nonfiction texts.

Context clues are a powerful tool for all readers! Use this lesson to teach your students how to utilize context clues to determine the meanings of unknown words.

Kids will love learning some fun facts about elephants while developing their reading comprehension skills. Using T-charts and Venn diagrams, they'll analyze stories and explore different characteristics of fiction and nonfiction.

That’s right! The theme applies to everyone! Use this interactive lesson to teach your students how to find the theme of a fictional text.

Help your students absorb the details of a text and make inferences about what they read with the strategy of close reading. By reading closely, students will become better able to understand complex themes and nuances in a text.

This lesson helps your students practice making text connections so they can write about their reading. It can be taught on its own or serve as a precursor to the Reading Response Letters lesson.

Encourage your students to translate their understanding of theme to poetry. In this lesson, students will evaluate the theme of poems by sketching pictures and citing text evidence.

It’s time to make an educated guess! In this lesson, your students will practice using their background knowledge and evidence from the text to make inferences in nonfiction pieces about Martin Luther King, Jr., and Cesar Chavez.

Help your students become super readers! In this lesson, your students will create storyboards to identify the beginning, middle, and end in fictional texts.

In this lesson, students will use their creativity, a graphic organizer, and a fun story to learn about character analysis.

This lesson helps students summarize fictional stories using sequence words. Students will have a chance to practice distinguishing the different parts of a story in this lesson, which can be taught as a precursor to Storyboard Superstars.

Close reading isn’t about just ticking through words on a page; it’s about absorbing ideas and expanding on them. In this lesson, students will use this strategy to make interpretations about a character's emotions through their actions.

Use this lesson to help your ELs use information from text features to better understand the text. It can be a stand-alone lesson or a support lesson for the Text Features: Reading that Makes Sense lesson.

Young readers will love this story-filled reading comprehension lesson. It's packed with engaging exercises designed to help students become better at looking for details and annotating passages of text.

By analzying picture books, students will make connections between the text and the illustrations of a story. They will compare and contrast the text and the illustrations and reflect upon how they impact their comprehension of a text.

How familiar are your fourth graders with the fictional genres available in their class or school libraries? This lesson introduces them to many genres of fictional books so they can get off to a terrific start of fourth grade reading.

Improve your students' comprehension of non-fictional reading through this lesson that teaches them about text features. Students will find their own text features and explain why they aid in the reading process.

In this lesson, students will improve their skills in using context clues to determine the meaning of difficult words. Use it as a stand-alone lesson or as support to the lesson Journey on the Underground Railroad.