Before students can respond to literature critically, they must have a strong grasp of big ideas and summary writing. Support your ELs in these foundational reading skills by introducing a three-sentence paragraph frame for summary writing.

This lesson walks students through the first few steps of crafting a personal narrative. Writers will start by going through a process to select an idea to write about, then begin to craft a hook that invites readers into their story.

Use this lesson to help your ELs understand main idea and supporting details in the context of sentences and paragraphs. It can be a stand-alone lesson or a support lesson to the Power Reading lesson.

Help students learn how to read passages with multiple main ideas and differentiate between main ideas and supporting details by creating a graphic organizer with proof from the text.

Informative essays have a structure that is fairly easy to dissect. This lesson includes an anchor essay which students will mark up, a mixed-up essay outline for them to sort, and a web for them to organize ideas for their own essay.

Help your students learn how to move smoothly between ideas and paragraphs using transition words and phrases. Young writers will use real texts as mentors as they study how authors use words to transition between ideas and support their claims. As a result, they will have a word bank to use in their own writing.