Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway: Analyze Various Texts With Similar Themes
In this lesson, you will make inferences and draw conclusions about similar themes across various genres by finding supporting evidence within each of the texts. This task will require you to use your analytical reading skills, and it...
Common Sense Media
Common Sense Media: Character Development and Relationships in Hamlet
A lesson plan relating to Hamlet whose objective is to able to "analyze how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text". Lesson includes a hook, direct instruction, guided practice, and...
Wisc-Online
Wisc Online: Summary Writing
In this learning module, students demonstrate an understanding of summary writing by reading step-by-step instructions and then summarizing short paragraphs. Examples of summaries that are poorly written, as well as those that are...
Love To Know Media
Your Dictionary: Lesson Plans on Summary Writing Skills
This article focuses on how to help teachers write lesson plans that will aid students in learning to write clear, concise summaries of movies and literary works.
Other
Short Story Elements
Geared toward high school students, this site contains many notes and links on the aspects of short story, figurative language, and figures of speech.
Alabama Learning Exchange
Alex: Using Digital Notebook to Visualize Thematic Links
Students will work in groups of two or three to produce two pages of a digital scrapbook covering a thematic element from Macbeth. The pages will then be assembled into a visual review of the play's themes and character motivations...
Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway: Writing Expository Text Summaries
This resource presents instructional practices for writing summaries of expository text in English language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies classes.
Edutopia
Edutopia: Common Core in Action: 10 Visual Literacy Strategies
Explicitly teach a collection of competencies that will help students think through, think about, and think with pictures.
Khan Academy
Khan Academy: Main Point Quick Guide
The first question in most Reading Comprehension sets will ask you to identify the statement that best expresses the central idea or the main point that the passage as a whole is designed to convey.
Louisiana Department of Education
Louisiana Doe: Louisiana Believes: Ela Guidebooks: Summarizing
This strategy helps students refine their understanding of texts to meet reading expectations and prepare for writing about texts.
Joe Landsberger
Study Guides & Strategies: How to Read an Essay
Use this guide when reading an expository text or any type of essay, as it provides important questions you should ask yourself while you read. You can access this page in multiple languages from the English homepage.
AdLit
Ad lit.org: Pre Reading Activities for El Ls
Pre-reading activities can engage student interest, activate prior knowledge, or pre-teach potentially difficult concepts and vocabulary. They also offer a great opportunity to introduce comprehension components such as cause and effect,...
Ted Nellen
Cyber English (By Ted Nellen): Theme
This is a glossary entry for the term "Theme" including a definition and an example.
Other
Gallaudet University: Reading and Mapping
Learn strategies for reading and mapping. This link offers important tips on improving test taking skills. Includes a PDF (requires Adobe Reader).
Other
Reading Quest: Strategies for Reading Comprehension: Concept of Definition Map
Sometimes teaching students about creating definitions is difficult because they do not understand about multiple meanings or depth in meaning. This is a chance to teach students, using the concept map included, how to create definitions...
ClassFlow
Class Flow: Plot and the Most Dangerous Game
[Free Registration/Login Required] This flipchart teaches students about plot and gives examples from short story and also highlights vocabulary.
ClassFlow
Class Flow: Topic & Main Idea
[Free Registration/Login Required] Recognizing the main idea is the key to good comprehension. The main idea is a general idea under which fits all the supporting material of the passage or paragraph. Learn and use three strategies that...
Other
Landmark School Outreach: Finding the Main Idea
This reading strategy resource provides steps for identifying the main idea of an informational text. Example informational text paragraphs are provided, along with detailed explanations for the processes used in identifying the main...
Other
Critical Reading: Three Ways to Read and Discuss Texts
Designed to help students think about their reading and writing skills, this page offers three different ways to interpret and discuss texts.
Other
Live binders.com: Reader and Task Considerations
Reader and task considerations including Cognitive Capabilities, Reading Skills, Motivation and Engagement with Task and Text, Prior Knowledge and Experience, Content and/or Theme Concerns, Complexity of Associated Tasks.
Other
Mantex: Tutorials: What Is Close Reading?
This site discusses the four types of reading: Linguistic, Semantic, Structural, and Cultural and offers a detailed example of close reading. RL.11-12.3 Auth choice story elem, RL.11-12.5 Choice of Text Structure
Lumen Learning
Lumen: Introduction to Reading and Interpreting Literary Texts
This introduction to reading and analyzing text features a list of learning objectives for analyzing prose and poetry, and an understanding of critical approaches to literary interpretation.
Quizlet
Quizlet: Text Structure: Match
In this interactive game, students match the types of text structure to their definitions.
Annenberg Foundation
Annenberg Learner: Literature: Analyzing Theme
Article explains how to find the theme in a piece of literature by asking yourself a series of questions as you read. RL.9-10.1 Analyzing Theme. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.2