In this lesson, students will practice listening comprehension skills after reading “The Paper Bag Princess” together as a class. Afterward, students will role-play, make inferences, and use summarization to strengthen literacy skills.

In this lesson, ask students to compare and contrast two important African-American historical figures. Students will write an informational paragraph on the similarities and differences between W.E.B. Du Bois and George Washington Carver.

Marie Curie’s monumental achievements in chemistry and physics are remarkable. In this lesson, your students will read two accounts of her life, integrate the details, and assess the importance of having more than one source of information.

Frederick Douglass was an influential black man in U.S. history. In this lesson, the historical context is set for students so that they can conduct their own research on Frederick Douglass, using a graphic organizer and multiple sources, before writing an informational essay on him. Ideal for fourth and fifth grade students, this lesson plan not only gives students practice in research and essay-writing skills, it also has them exploring a fascinating part of our country's history.

Your students’ understanding will reach its peak when they ask detail-seeking questions from observations made about plateaus, mesas, canyons, and buttes. Students will use illustrations and text to assist in their questions and answers.

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.

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz was a 17th century writer and philosopher who today is considered one of the first documented feminists and advocates for women’s education. In this lesson, students will read two nonfiction texts about Sor Juana and discuss her life and accomplishments before writing an opinion piece about her.

All fictional stories have story elements but they sure can differ between stories. In this lesson, students will compare and contrast the story elements of two fictional stories and document their findings in a graphic organizer.

In this lesson, students will use conjunctions to compare and contrast scary stories. It can be taught independently or used as a pre-lesson to Using Story Elements to Compare and Contrast Fiction Texts.

In this lesson, your students will practice writing about places important to them through poetry. By the time they are done, students will have become better writers and taken a walk down memory lane!

Explore a day in the life of a pencil! Your students will practice different points of view by thinking outside the box and writing as though they are something else.

Engage students in analysis by examining archetypes in fairy tales. Teach students to identify heroes and villains in fairy tales, examine patterns, and create their own fairy tales to express their knowledge of archetypes.

Use this lesson to help your ELs learn character traits and find them in a text. It can be a stand-alone lesson or a support lesson to the Identifying Character Traits lesson.