Students will learn how to identify story elements and create a short and sweet summary. They will fill out a graphic organizer and solidify their understanding by creating illustrations to show major plot points that they find themselves!

Students will learn about the holiday El Día de los Muertos through engaging activities and connecting to their own traditions.

This lesson focuses on how punctuation affects reading fluency and comprehension using graphic organizers and sentence stems. Use this lesson as a stand-alone activity or a support for the Punctuation and Prosody lesson plan.

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.

This engaging lesson teaches students about the famous author Faith Ringgold. Students will explore two pieces of literature, comparing and contrasting story elements, then write opinion pieces to illustrate which book they liked best.

Your students will learn academic vocabulary and use a graphic organizer to compare and contrast two short stories. Use this as a stand-alone lesson or as an introduction to the Comparing and Contrasting Short Stories lesson plan.

In this literary lesson, students use fairy tales to practice identifying character traits. Students are challenged to justify their reasoning using text based support.

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.

Anansi invites his friend Turtle to dinner at his house ... but does he treat him like a friend? In this reading comprehension lesson, your class practices questioning, retelling, and identifying the moral in "Anansi and the Turtle."

Teach your students about picture walks as a strategy to understand the author's purpose in a fictional text. This lesson can be used as a stand-alone lesson or as support for the Examining Author's Purpose in a Fictional Text lesson.

This winter-themed lesson plan, which incorporates the book Tree of Cranes by Allen Say, teaches students about Japanese traditions and customs. They will review the basic elements of a narrative story, and then write their own narratives about a special event or moment in their life.

This lesson will help your students summarize short stories and describe how characters respond to challenges using a story map. Use this lesson as a stand-alone activity or a support lesson for the Story Mapping Group Work lesson plan.

In this lesson, your students will practice their reading comprehension and vocabulary with the Pledge of Allegiance. They will reflect on the meaning of the pledge.

This exciting lesson plan will introduce your second grade students to two different versions of the well-loved Cinderella story while also teaching them about making inferences and comparing and contrasting stories.

Use this lesson to teach students about the importance of reading fluently to support comprehension. Use as a stand alone activity or a support for the Increasing Reading Stamina and Comprehension lesson plan.

This lesson will help students identify the author's point of view and purpose for writing an informational text.

Cats are the best! Pizza is better! My teacher rules! In Fact or Opinion: Part 1, your students will combine reading and writing to learn about the differences between facts and opinions and how those differences are communicated.

Teach your second graders how to write a prediction and summarize book chapters in this exciting lesson!

Mae Jemison was the first African American female astronaut to enter space! Use the Who Is Mae Jemison? lesson plan to get to know this prominent scientist and entrepreneur. Students will read about Mae and then answer questions about her.

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.

This lesson provides teachers with an opportunity to teach students about reading stamina and assess student comprehension during independent reading.

Teach your class about the genre of traditional literature, made up of stories from around the world that have been told for generations. In this lesson, students will read fairy tales and compare story elements in each piece of literature.

Use this lesson to help students identify the elements of a fictional text while gaining more knowledge about parts of speech. Use as a stand alone activity or a support lesson for Fairy Tales: Identifying Story Elements.