ReadWriteThink
Read Write Think: Exploring How Section Headings Support Understanding
Teaching students to pay attention to headings and titles as they read? Here you'll find a practical application for using an expository text to apply the concept of using headings. Geared toward older elementary students, but lesson...
ReadWriteThink
Read Write Think: Get the Gist: A Summarizing Strategy for Any Content Area
A five-part standards-based lesson plan in which students learn to write a 20 word summary of an informational text by focusing on answering the questions who, what, when, where, why, and how. This strategy can be applied to any content...
Joe Landsberger
Study Guides & Strategies: Writing Persuasive Essays
This site focuses on the student learning how to write strong persuasive essays. Strategies are provided to help the student complete a persuasive writing assignment.
Alabama Learning Exchange
Alex: How to Make Something Simple, Hard
Students will have completed a unit of forces and motion prior to the current unit of study on simple machines (lever, inclined plane, screw, wedge, pulley, wheel and axle). Students will review the functions and examples of simple...
Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway: Commentary on Quotations From Text in an Interpretive Response
[Accessible by TX Educators. Free Registration/Login Required] In this lesson, you will learn how to include quotations from a text and commentary on those quotations. It includes a variety of practice exercises.
Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway: Relevant Information and Valid Inferences
[Accessible by TX Educators. Free Registration/Login Required] In this lesson, you will learn how to make the information in your expository essays relevant and your inferences valid.
Alabama Learning Exchange
Alex: Exploring Customs and Cultures Part 1
Students meet both language arts and social studies objectives in this interdisciplinary unit on customs and cultures. In part 1 of the unit students practice research and writing skills to create a slideshow. In part 2 of the unit...
Polk Brothers Foundation Center for Urban Education at DePaul University
De Paul University: Center for Urban Education: Chicago Changes [Pdf]
"Chicago Changes" is a one page, nonfiction, reading passage about how Chicago changed from a small town to a large city. It is followed by questions which require students to provide evidence from the story; it includes: determining...
PBS
Pbs Learning Media: Saving Crystal River
Explore the effects that an invasive species can have on the environment. In this interactive lesson, students learn how Lyngbya, a destructive form of algae, is creating environmental problems for the plants and wildlife in the Crystal...
PBS
Pbs Learning Media: What Edison Teaches Us About Success
In this interactive activity, students examine Thomas Edison's character traits and how they contributed to his becoming one of the greatest inventors in history. In this interactive activity, students watch videos to gather evidence...
EL Education
El Education: Chickenology: The Art and Science of Keeping Chickens
This manual was written by a group of middle school and high school students in the Maplewood Richmond Heights school district. The students, known as the "Chickenologists", care for the district's flock of chickens. This comprehensive...
Education Place
Houghton Mifflin: Eduplace: 5 Ws Chart [Pdf]
This site from Houghton Mifflin Company provides a simple, reproducible chart to help students gather details of Who, What, When, Where, and Why. This could be used as a reading comprehension tool, or as prewriting for expository writing.
Polk Brothers Foundation Center for Urban Education at DePaul University
De Paul University: Center for Urban Education: Changing the Ecosystem: Q & a [Pdf]
"Changing the Ecosystem: Q & A" is a one page, nonfiction, reading passage about how the loss of the prairie to farming and population growth impacts the ecosystem. It is followed by questions which require students to provide...
Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway: Explain the Controlling Idea, Purpose, and Distinguish Details
[Accessible by TX Educators. Free Registration/Login Required] In this lesson, students will learn how to pinpoint the controlling idea, which not only identifies the main idea, but also answers questions about the author's goal or...
EL Education
El Education: Beetlemania: It's More Than John, Paul, Ringo and George
Beetlemania is a field guide to the Rocky Mountain Beetle Infestation in the Colorado Forest Ecosystem written and illustrated by 5th and 6th grade students at Explore Elementary in Thornton, CO. This extensive field guide includes...
John F. Kennedy Center
The Kennedy Center: Multi Media Hero Analysis
Using what they learn about how heroes are depicted in art, literature, and music, students create their own definition of a hero, and then write an essay based on a hero they wish to research.