Curated OER
Rising and Falling Actions
Rising and falling actions are big parts of how a plot moves through the course of a story, narrative, or novel. Youngsters use examples from their texts as they examine where the action rises and falls in the book, How My Parents...
Curated OER
Facts and Opinions in a Variety of Genres
Here is a lesson plan dedicated to helping learners understand the differences between facts and opinions. They examine the first page of several books from the class library to determine if the book is fact or opinion based. A Venn...
Curated OER
Plot with More Than One Problem
Every good story has a plot, and every good plot contains a conflict or problem. Third graders familiarize themselves and identify how problems in a story are connected. First as a class and then in small groups or individually, learners...
Curated OER
Baby Peanut Plants
Science is a subject ripe with opportunities to read informational text. Kids read to learn about peanuts! They read an informational passage, fill out two comprehension worksheets, and then conduct a lab experiment on a peanut. The...
Curated OER
Mighty Earth Movers
Note that although the publisher lists almost all of the Common Core standards for both math and language arts, you will most likely want to take the general topic and choose which area to focus on. Regarding math, pupils measure worms...
Curated OER
Piece by Piece
What do your pupils know about quilting? Read and discuss the information included here before sending class members off to create their own quilt blocks using construction paper. When they have completed their blocks, provide some time...
Curated OER
Just Lookin' For a Home
What is a boll weevil? Your class can find out that and more by following the activities included here. Pupils read an article, sing a boll weevil song, add to the song with their own original lyrics, illustrate the song, study the...
Beacon Learning Center
Beacon Learning Center: What Caused It?: Student Web Lesson
Students are asked to be detectives while they read and to look for the cause/effect sentences in the paragraphs. In this activity, students read paragraphs and answer questions about it by either typing in their responses or selecting...
Beacon Learning Center
Beacon Learning Center: Interpreting Line Graphs
This site is a lesson on creating and interpreting a line graph. It explains how a line graph is created and then asks questions about what is learned from the data. Students type in open responses, and answers and feedback follow.
Beacon Learning Center
Beacon Learning Center: Push Ups
This is a tutorial on line graphs including when, how, and why one might choose to use them and how to interpret the data when it is complete. This one is to reach a goal for the number of push ups needed to win the Presidential Fitness...
Other
La Rue Literacy Exercises: Reading a Map: Quiz 12
In this quiz, students are given sections of a map with locations like the school, post office, back, etc. They are asked questions about directions from one place to the other.
University of South Florida
Fcat Reading Grade 4: Teaching Strategies
This is a great resource that concentrates strategies and student activities in one place in an easy to use format, and can be navigated easily. Find great examples of probable passage, selective underlining, and semantic feature...
University of Houston
University of Houston: Extra! Extra! What's the Big Idea?!
Get the feel of running a newspaper by selecting articles and pictures. If you are interested in checking out real newspapers, there is a clickable list of online newspapers for younger readers.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Pingus Penguins: Writing Good Instructions
Students use the free computer game Pingus to learn how engineers, specifically environmental engineers, use their technical writing skills to give instructions and follow the instructions of others. Students learn to write instructions...
Read Works
Read Works: Passages: Forgetting the Words
[Free Registration/Login Required] Students read a fiction text about a boy named Andy who has a part in the school play and answer questions about comprehension, conflict, inferencing, main idea, literary devices, and more. Links to a...
Read Works
Read Works: Passages: Lessons From Fishing
[Free Registration/Login Required] Students read a fiction text about a boy named Morgan who loved to fish and answer questions about comprehension, comparing details, supporting details, main idea, vocabulary, and more. Links to a...
![National Geographic: Informational Text and Young Children [Pdf] Professional Doc](https://d15y2dacu3jp90.cloudfront.net/images/attachment_defaults/resource/large/FPO-knovation.png "National Geographic: Informational Text and Young Children [Pdf] Professional Doc")
Cengage Learning
National Geographic: Informational Text and Young Children [Pdf]
Research-based informative article on when, why and how to introduce and teach reading skills with informational texts to early-elementary students beginning as early as kindergarten.
CommonLit
Common Lit: What Is Antarctica?
CommonLit.org is a wonderful resource to use in a Language Arts classroom. Each story or article is accompanied by guided reading questions, assessment questions, and discussion questions. In addition, students can click on words to see...
Other
Fdlrs: Thinking Maps: Examples From Brevard Public Schools
See examples of the use of the eight graphic organizers from Thinking Maps. These maps help students organize their learning and identify ways to reflect different kinds of text. The several examples from each grade K-6 show how to use...
Better Lesson
Better Lesson: Text Feature Diagrams
At the end of this instructional activity, students will be able to identify and create diagrams associated with informational text. Included is a link to an eSpark video on diagrams, rules for group work, multiple examples of diagrams,...
Better Lesson
Better Lesson: Visual Representations in Informational Text
Students will look at examples of illustrations and diagrams in informational texts and discuss how each one helps enhance the text. Students gain the knowledge that sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words because a complex idea...
Better Lesson
Better Lesson: What Shapes the Land?
In this instructional activity, the teacher will read a book about different landforms. The children will learn about the features of the landforms and how they were shaped by natural forces. Then text features will be discussed. The...
Utah Education Network
Uen: Cool Tools for Finding Information (Grade 3 4)
Identify text structures in various informational sources.
Other
Smekens Educational Solutions: Expose K 2 Readers to Annotation Strategies
This article discusses how to begin teaching students in K-2 to record their ideas about text using highlighters, colored pens, large graphic organizers, and sticky notes. Students can retell a story with a storyboard, use a web to find...