Better Lesson
Better Lesson: Analyzing Text Complexity of Non Fiction Sources
This lesson plan will help middle schoolers read and comprehend nonfiction, specifically biographies, through determining criteria for text complexity. Included is a PDF and Smart Notebook titled Determining Text Complexity, and an...
CPALMS
Cpalms: Structures and Skeletons
In this interactive learning module, students read informational text about dinosaurs and examine paragraph structure. They will learn about different types of text structure for informational paragraphs, identify the most effective...
Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway: Using Features of Literary & Informational Text to Guide Reading
A learning module that teaches students about using text features to guide reading in three mini lessons: Engaging with Text, Literary Think-Aloud, and Informational Think-Aloud. Download a PDF with lesson plans and printable handouts...
Capital Community College Foundation
Guide to Grammar and Writing: Identifying Sentence Parts
The Guide to Grammar and Writing at this site provides an exercise of eight sentences where each word is hyperlinked to identify its role as a part of the sentence.
Capital Community College Foundation
Guide to Grammar and Writing: Definitions of Basic Sentence Parts
This site from Capital Community College Foundation provides all the different parts of speech and their definitions. It also shows word functions and their use.
Capital Community College Foundation
Guide to Grammar and Writing: Exercise in Writing Concise Sentences
Practice rewriting each of these twelve sentences in a more clear and concise manner. Check each sentence against the answer provided to see how well they match up.
Capital Community College Foundation
Guide to Grammar and Writing: Definition of a Sentence
The Guide to Grammar and Writing defines many of the terms common to sentence development, such as the parts of speech, or provides links for those definitions. Discusses strategies for adding variety to sentence structures. Includes...
Capital Community College Foundation
Guide to Grammar and Writing: Diagramming Sentences Power Point
This handy PowerPoint presentation introduces the concept of sentence diagramming. It includes a number of examples.
Capital Community College Foundation
Guide to Grammar and Writing: Paragraph Development
This site from the Capital Community College helps with paragraph development and topic sentences.
Capital Community College Foundation
Guide to Grammar and Writing
A treasure of grammar and writing information. Index links broken down to sentence level, paragraph level, and essay level. Site also contains PDF samples of business writing and research papers, PowerPoint presentations, interactive...
AdLit
Ad lit.org: Classroom Strategies: First Lines
First Lines is a strategy in which students read the beginning sentences from assigned readings and make predictions about the content of what they're about to read. This pre-reading technique helps students focus their attention on what...
AdLit
Ad lit.org: Extended Discussion of Text Meaning and Interpretation
Teachers should provide opportunities for students to engage in high-quality discussions of the meaning and interpretation of texts in various content areas as one important way to improve their reading comprehension.
AdLit
Ad lit.org: Five Areas of Instructional Improvement to Increase Academic Literacy
How can content-area, non-reading-specialist teachers contribute to academic literacy? They can incorporate these five techniques throughout their lessons: (1) provide explicit instruction and supported practice in effective...
AdLit
Ad lit.org: Seven Strategies to Teach Students Text Comprehension
Comprehension strategies are conscious plans - sets of steps that good readers use to make sense of text. Comprehension strategy instruction helps students become purposeful, active readers who are in control of their own reading...
AdLit
Ad lit.org: Key Literacy Component: Text Comprehension
Text comprehension allows readers to extract or construct meaning from the written word. Students who misread words or misinterpret their meanings are at a disadvantage. Proper instruction can boost students' skills in this key area.
University of Richmond
University of Richmond: Writer's Web: How to Make Sentences Clear and Concise
Four simple rules for students to follow when editing sentences to make them more clear and concise. By looking at the use of prepositions, verb choices, active voice, and more, students can learn to improve their sentence writing...
Towson University
Towson University: Online Writing Support: Elements of Sentence Construction
This entry focuses on the Elements of Sentence Construction including subjects and predicates, phrases and clauses, compound sentence elements, and avoiding fragments, run-ons, and fused sentences.
Writing Fix
Writing Fix: Show What Your Mind Sees
This writing activity asks writers to make use of both showing and telling as they create a well-organized paragraph of description. After reviewing showing versus telling by building a writer's notebook page, each writer will show what...
Writing Fix
Writing Fix: Serendipitous Character Descriptions
In this lesson, students create a unique character and develop a descriptive paragraph utilizing strong word choice.
Writing Fix
Writing Fix: Teaching Students to Compose a Power Paragraph [Pdf]
This PDF lesson, POWER PARAGRAPH, focuses on analysis and will also help students to understand structure in a paragraph. The "power" concept teaches the students to organize their sentences according to different levels of importance....
Curated OER
Mc Graw Hill: Part 2 Reading: Determine Main Ideas and Supporting Details
See how to pick out the main ideas and supporting details on this site. Click on Model at the bottom right.
Curated OER
Mc Graw Hill: Part 2 Reading: Determine Main Ideas and Supporting Details
See an example of how to determine the main ideas and supporting details of a story.
E Reading Worksheets
E Reading Worksheets: Patterns of Organization: Order of Importance
This site provides an explanation of the order of importance text structure. A diagram is provided to provide to supplement the explanation.
Grammarly
Grammarly Handbook: Writing Concisely
This page compares wordy writing to a art gallery cluttered with a mixture of great works and poor attempts making it hard to see the great works. Remove the clutter, write concisely so the reader gets the point of the paper. It offers...