Help your students' story telling abilities grow with this lesson that helps them recount what happened in a story and has them point out key details.

Ask an important question this month: What does an activist do? This engaging lesson can be used leading up to Martin Luther King Jr. Day (and year-round). It supports students in understanding what it means to be an activist and how Martin Luther King Jr. used collaborative action to change the world and speak out against oppression. Perfect for first graders and second graders, this activity explores word meaning and other reading and writing skills.

Do you have students who are constantly asking what, who, where, why, how, and when? It's your turn to ask now! Have them read various stories and ask them to answer these questions in this lesson.

Featuring Stephanie's Ponytail by Robert Munsch, this creative writing lesson gives students the chance to turn themselves into the main characters of emotion-packed short stories.

Second graders love field trips and sharing their opinions! This fun lesson combines both, as students must convince their teacher to take them on a field trip by practicing their opinion writing and using paragraph structure.

What better way to represent what you’ve learned than through an infographic? In this lesson, students read nonfiction texts then create infographics to share the main topics, key ideas, evidence, and more!

What makes a poem a poem? And what makes a story a story? In this lesson, students learn to distinguish between different types of texts while analyzing the sentences and words they encounter.

Teach your class to develop strong inferencing skills by focusing on clues and hard evidence. In this lesson, students will play a game of “What’s for Breakfast?” to help them link context clues with word meaning.

Second grade students will step into the author’s shoes as they hunt for evidence to determine what a nonfiction author’s purpose might be.

Strong narratives have clear sequences of events. Through this lesson, students plan out what will happen in their story before they start writing their own engaging narratives.

Thinking about who, what, when, where, and why isn’t just for detectives! Students will practice gleaning important information from texts using these questions and a few other tools.

Using charts is a great way to see similarities, differences, and information. This visual lesson will help all students see what can be gained from nonfiction and fiction texts.

What sound does the letter E make? Your students will practice identifying pictures, reading, and making words with the short E sound in this fun-filled phonics lesson.

This lesson incorporates different learning styles to help students get a firm grasp of what a noun is and its function. It even highlights the important tie between grammar and writing.

Imagine what that interjection might be! As students learn about the purpose and use of interjections, they will use their imaginations to match interjections with a variety of emotions.

Every name has a story behind it. This lesson allows students to share the story of their name with their classmates. Not only is it fun, it's ideal for establishing a respectful classroom community.

Use this lesson to help your ELs learn about words and what they mean. This lesson can stand alone or be used as a pre-lesson for the Vocabulary Flash Cards lesson.

Use this lesson to teach your students how to express opinions about nonfiction topics. This lesson can stand alone or be used as a pre-lesson for the What Does the Author Think? lesson.

This lesson plan teaches kids about W.E.B. Du Bois through video and a short informational text. Students will compare/contrast their findings and create a poster in small groups showing what they learned.

A deeper understanding of what constitutes a complete sentence will help your young writers understand how to create technically correct and more complex sentences. This practice will help students edit and revise their writing.

What is the intention of an indentation within a paragraph? Within this lesson, students will explore the reasons why we indent. They’ll categorize and classify content to construct paragraphs that include indentations.

Your students will learn all about what makes a fictional character special when they become character detectives! Use this lesson to introduce the concept of using key details from a text to gather information.

In this lesson, students will practice "reading" pictures. They will look at the details in pictures in order to make predictions about what happens in a text. This lesson can be used alone or with the Predicting Pictures lesson plan.

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.

What makes a story, a story? In this lesson, students examine the elements of stories. They learn to use pre-planning strategies to set their own stories up for success... before they even start writing!

Mae Jemison was the first African American female astronaut to enter space! Use this lesson plan to help your students get to know this prominent scientist, and determine what makes her an influencial person.

This is a lesson about the immigration procedures at Ellis Island. Students will learn about the process and creatively write about what it was like for immigrants to pass through Ellis Island.

Could there be a pot of gold waiting for you at the end of that rainbow? Or is it hiding elsewhere? In this St. Patrick's Day lesson plan, students will write about what they would do if they found a pot of gold.

How can you see what your students are thinking while they read? Try reading response letters in your class. Students will practice formatting letters and learn to discuss their thinking about literature in writing.

What if Cinderella’s stepsisters weren’t really evil? In this engaging lesson, you will introduce your students to multiple points of view and discuss how these different perspectives can change a reader’s experience.