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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In this lesson, the class will review what it means to make an inference. After you model how to make an inference in a painting using your schema, your students will work in groups to analyze additional paintings to make more inferences.

We write sentences to tell thoughts, but what happens when we add some parameters? In this lesson, students dissect the words they find in sentences then follow directions to create their own wacky sentences.

Use this lesson to gauge your students’ basic comprehension of fiction text. If they can answer who, what, when, where, why, and how questions, you know they have a handle on it and it’s time to get into more critical thinking!

What do red envelopes, pomelos, and water narcissus flowers have in common? They all bring good fortune during the Chinese New Year! In this lesson, students will write about someone to whom they would like to grant good fortune.

Gabi Garcia's "Listening With My Heart" provides students with an opportunity to reflect on ways to extend themselves compassion all year long. This engaging lesson supports students in understanding what kindness is, as well as how to be kind to themselves and others in their daily lives.

Being able to express and support opinions is greatly beneficial for young learners. This lesson plan includes fun exercises to help students learn about opinions and write supporting statements for their own opinions.

Your students will practice searching for clues to uncover the main idea and supporting details in nonfiction texts about John Muir and Day of the Dead traditions around the world.

Students will use their understanding of plot, theme, and comparing and contrasting in this lesson that teaches about an award-winning African American author, Jacqueline Woodson. Students will read some of her fiction books and compare and contrast the stories. They'll also discuss what they think makes Jacqueline Woodson an award-winning author.