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.

Keep it simple! Teach your students to write a summary using the Somebody-Wanted-But-So-Then frame for analyzing a story.

Capture the tip of the iceberg! Use this lesson plan to teach your students to summarize nonfiction texts by noting the “tip of the iceberg,” also known as the main idea. Students will identify and sequence them.

Get a workout with repeat reading activities! Use this lesson plan with your students to practice reading fluency and build comprehension and summary details using fiction classics.

Support your EL students in understanding and identifying the main idea and supporting details in a nonfiction text. This can support the lesson Tip of the Iceberg: Nonfiction Summary Details.

In this support lesson, your ELs will use key vocabulary and sentence structures to summarize a story. It can be a stand-alone lesson or used as support for the lesson Comparing and Contrasting Book Series.

Star light, star bright! Teach students all about constellations and earth movement with this engaging science lesson plan. Broken out over several days, this unit encourages students to research and report on a constellation.

Prepare your students to analyze and respond to literature by practicing five types of responses: predictions, questions, clarification, connections, and opinions.

Give your class a deeper understanding of theme with this art and poetry-focused lesson plan about theme. By the end of the lesson, students will understand what theme is and how to determine theme in a piece of writing, such as a poem.

Use this lesson to help your ELs summarize information from a text and use context clues to determine the meaning of unfamiliar words. This lesson can be a stand-alone lesson or used as support to the Day 4 section of the Star Unit lesson.

Nonfiction texts offer a great lens into cause and effect relationships. Use this lesson plan to teach your class to compare cause-and-effect relationships across texts that share a topic.

What’s the impact? In this integrated language arts and science lesson students will explore causes and effects that specifically relate to environmental impact, including the effects of human actions.

A lesson about the Great Depression doesn't have to depress your students! They will enjoy building background knowledge for Bud, Not Buddy with great interactive and cooperative learning tasks.

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.

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.

Let your students' creative juices flow with this lesson that teaches them about collage and symbolism. Students will create their own collage self portrait and learn about Romare Bearden.

Students can have a love affair with fiction while details of the genre can go unnoticed! Using this lesson, your students look under the hood of their favorite fiction by analyzing texts across common themes and topics that hook readers.

Motivate your students to learn about significant figures in US history by giving them the opportunity to create a fake social media page based on facts.

This lesson will allow students to explore the backgrounds and contributions of the Founding Fathers by completing an online scavenger hunt and writing a basic biography.

Show and prove! Use this lesson plan and say farewell to fiction reading logs of yore, as your students (literally) draw connections across theme, cause, and effect.

Using this lesson plan, your students will synthesize literary information by reimagining storyline outcomes. Substituting characters from their favorite texts and reimagining the effects will excite and bring your class new insights!

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.

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.

Help your students' favorite characters come to life in new adventures as student writers draft new endings to their favorite stories.

Students will engage their analytical skills and literacy skills as they compare books within a series. The central activity in this lesson will have students identifying, comparing, and contrasting the shared features of books in a series.

In this civics lesson, your students will learn about the electoral college through first-hand experience! Then, they will write about the best way to vote using evidence to support their opinion.

So many students love to read books in a series but they don't give much thought to what a series really is. In this lesson students discover the two kinds of book series and apply classifying criteria to examples in the library.

Give students many opportunities to see how visuals can influence a story's meaning. Show off your acting skills and read a great book to help them learn!

In this lesson, your students will identify and compare the features found in primary and secondary sources.

Use this lesson to help your ELs identify the main idea and supporting evidence in a short fictional text. It can be a stand-alone lesson or used as support for the lesson Reading Closely.