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Unit Plan
Texas Education Agency

Texas Gateway: Summarize Informational/expository Text (English 6 Reading)

For Students 5th - 7th Standards
[Accessible by TX Educators. Free Registration/Login Required] Learn how to summarize the main ideas and supporting details in text and understand that a summary does not include opinions.
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Unit Plan
CommonLit

Common Lit: Where Did I Come From

For Students 5th - 6th Standards
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...
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Unit Plan
CommonLit

Common Lit: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Changing America

For Students 5th - 6th Standards
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...
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Unit Plan
CommonLit

Common Lit: Duck & Cover: School Drills During the Cold War

For Students 5th - 6th Standards
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...
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Unit Plan
CPALMS

Florida State University Cpalms: Florida Students: Integrating Information: A Titanic Challenge

For Students 5th Standards
Read about the sinking of the Titanic and learn to identify key ideas in multiple texts, review similarities and differences between those key ideas, and identify the difference between important and interesting key ideas. This...
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Website
Other

Reading Quest: Making Sense of Social Studies

For Teachers 9th - 10th Standards
Teaching students to read well in areas other than language arts requires teaching and reinforcing the kinds of reading strategies taught here. There are 27 strategies, ranging from brainstorming to word mapping. The site includes PDF...
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Lesson Plan
Michigan State University

Michigan State University: Intervention for Reading: Summarization Strategy

For Teachers Pre-K - 1st Standards
Improve understanding of expository materials by summarizing the main ideas. The summarization strategy helps students recall the main ideas and specific facts of materials they read. There are five rules for writing summaries.
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Lesson Plan
Scholastic

Scholastic: Lesson Plan for Nonfiction Comprehension: Skimming Text

For Teachers 9th - 10th Standards
Build comprehension by developing reading strategies for use with nonfiction text. This lesson focuses on teaching students to recognize text elements as clues to help them quickly locate key information in text.
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Lesson Plan
Writing Fix

Writing Fix: The Wacky Advertisement (With Disclaimer) Activity

For Teachers 3rd - 8th Standards
Inspired by Barry Lane's book 51 Wacky We-Search Reports, in this cross-curricular lesson plan students learn how to summarize properly.
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Professional Doc
Wisconsin Response to Intervention Center

Wisconsin Rt I Center: Text Dependent Questions [Pdf]

For Teachers 9th - 10th Standards
Describes a reading strategy where students must respond to text by supporting their ideas with text-based evidence. Lists different categories of questions the teacher can prepare based on the text chosen, with examples for each.
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Handout
Curated OER

Mc Graw Hill: Part 2 Reading: Informational Text: Connections Within Text

For Students 3rd - 5th Standards
Learn how information in a text can be connected through compare and contrast, cause and effect, and sequence.
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Activity
Curated OER

Mc Graw Hill: Part 1: Reading Literature: Show Understanding of Text

For Students 3rd - 5th Standards
This quick lesson from the Common Core Literacy eHandbook teaches students what questions to ask and how to answer questions to show your understanding of literature.
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Handout
Curated OER

Mc Graw Hill: Part 2 Reading: Determine Main Idea and Supporting Details

For Students 4th - 5th Standards
A reference article for students to learn about how to determine the main idea and supporting details from the text. Click on the Model for an example with explanation and then click on Practice for a practice exercise.
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Handout
Curated OER

Mc Graw Hill: Part 2 Reading: Determine Main Idea and Supporting Details: Model

For Students 3rd - 5th Standards
An example to guide students in choosing the main idea and supporting details. Click Practice for a practice quiz.
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Handout
Curated OER

Mc Graw Hill: Part 2 Reading: Informational Text: Summarize

For Students 3rd - 5th Standards
Learn how to summarize a text based on the main idea and supporting details you found.
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Handout
Curated OER

Mc Graw Hill: Part 2 Reading: Informational Text: Cause and Effect Text Structure

For Students 3rd - 5th Standards
Cause and Effect is a text organization structure and knowing this structure can help you in comprehending a text. Learn about these strategies on this site.
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Handout
Curated OER

Mc Graw Hill: Part 2 Reading: Determine Main Ideas and Supporting Details

For Students 3rd - 8th Standards
See how to pick out the main ideas and supporting details on this site. Click on Model at the bottom right.
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Handout
Curated OER

Mc Graw Hill: Part 2 Reading: Determine Main Ideas and Supporting Details

For Students 3rd - 8th Standards
See an example of how to determine the main ideas and supporting details of a story.
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Graphic
Polk Brothers Foundation Center for Urban Education at DePaul University

De Paul University: Center for Urban Education: Read to Learn, Share What You Learn [Pdf]

For Students 3rd - 8th Standards
Several tips for reading to learn are provided on this page. Students will explore the BIG idea presented in a nonfiction piece.
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Unit Plan
McGraw Hill

Mc Graw Hill:informational Text: Analyze Development of Text Elements:individuals

For Students 5th - 7th Standards
Read an informational piece, and learn how to analyze the development of individuals in the text. Includes practice exercises.
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Unknown Type
Education Development Center

Tv411: Summarizing

For Students 3rd - 5th Standards
This activity asks students to read short paragraphs and select the statement that best summarizes each paragraph. It is part of a larger reading unit.
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Activity
Curated OER

Mc Graw Hill: Part 2 Reading: Informational Text: Show Understanding of Text

For Students 3rd - 5th Standards
This quick activity includes a passage from an information text, and explains reading comprehension strategies to use to answer questions.
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Unit Plan
McGraw Hill

Mc Graw Hill: Informational Text: Determine Central Idea and Supporting Details

For Students 5th - 8th Standards
To understand a text, you must understand the central idea of the story. Learn how to recognize the central idea and supporting details with this article. Click the links at bottom right.
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Professional Doc
Other

Interacting Texts Directed Activities Related to Texts (Darts)

For Students 3rd - 8th Standards
Want to improve your students' reading skills? This is a good place to find the types of directed activities, using a definition text, reconstruction/analysis activities, and advantages of using DARTs.