Our Best Day
In this lesson, students will write about a classmate’s best day. They will then add details to the writing to support the central idea. This lesson integrates the instruction of the main idea in reading and writing.
What's in a Name?
Students will participate in hands-on activities to extend their knowledge of the parts of speech.
Diving Deeper: Using Text Evidence to Support Inferences
Students learn new ways to evaluate their thinking when making local and global inferences and justifying their validity.
Investigating Cause and Effect Through the Lens of the Alamo
This lesson is structured as a gradual release model of cause and effect. Students start by identifying cause and effect within a sentence, then progress to paragraphs, and finally finding cause and effect relationships on a given page in the book. This lesson integrates fourth-grade social studies standards with a text about the Alamo.
Retelling Fiction with Logical Order
Students will be able to understand how to retell a fictional story in logical order using transitional words.
Teaming up with Transitions
Students participate in an activity where they must link cause and effect statements using transition words. The lesson is designed with English learners in mind, and it includes instructional strategies designed to provide comprehensible input, such as visuals and collaborative learning.
Increasing Student Agency with Nonfiction Text
Students compare deep reading with an iceberg. Instruction focuses on teaching students’ close reading and annotation skills and increasing agency as students dive into informational text. Students are empowered through conversations, tech tools, and co-creation of criteria to read deeply.
Combining Sentences
Students will manipulate word and punctuation cards from mentor sentences to compose and decompose compound sentences.
Moving Beyond P. I. E.
In this lesson, students infer the author’s purpose of selected paragraphs of expository text. The lesson is designed with English learners in mind and utilizes instructional strategies designed to scaffold instruction such as collaborative learning strategies, student generated questions, anchor charts, and sentence frames to facilitate oral responses.
Tackling Transitions
In this lesson, students will learn how to effectively use transition words. These will be used to connect ideas and organize the flow of their writing so it is coherent.
Fun with First Drafts
The lesson will support students’ writing a first draft of a personal narrative story by providing opportunities to listen to their previously recorded story, review their (graphic organizer) draft web, and add sticky notes with further details to their webs.
Super Sleuths SIP on Vocabulary: Using Sentences, Illustrations, and Prefixes/Suffixes to Make Meaning
Students will learn strategies to find the meaning of unfamiliar vocabulary words using the acronym SIP (sentence, illustration, prefixes/suffixes).
Author’s Purpose, Text Features, Informational Text, and Daily Three
Students will follow the Daily Three structure to engage in mini-lessons regarding author’s purpose, text features, guided reading, work on writing, read to self, and word work. The students will also infer the author’s purpose for writing a book using a book order form.
Be an Editing Star with Checklists and TPR!
Students review editing marks using TPR (Total Physical Response), while listening to a reading of a mentor text. Next, students use a brief procedural composition to edit for punctuation, capitalization, commas, and complete sentences. Students also use a checklist to edit a peer’s writing.
Teaching Text Features of Elephant Proportions
Using a graphic organizer, students will collaboratively use text features to analyze an expository text. Students will locate information from the text to extract meaning and understanding about a topic.
One Step at a Time: A Lesson on Writing Procedural Text and the Power of Revising!
This lesson is designed to help young writers develop confidence in their writing abilities while being encouraged to edit and revise. Writers should develop revision skills to include detailed description while writing procedural text.
Diggin’ for Revisions
This lesson is focused on revising one sentence in isolation. The student and teacher choose a revision focus question before the lesson for the student to use as a guide for revising their sentence. Students provide feedback to their peers on how they could revise their sentence based on the selected focus question. Once feedback is completed, students begin revising their own sentence using toolboxes. At the end, students publish their revised sentence onto the online discussion tool and share out how they revised their sentence.
Tic-Tac-Toe Text Features
Students will participate in a scavenger hunt and will be given a tic-tac-toe grid with clues about specific text features. The students will use the clues to locate specific information in the text.
What Does the “Text Feature” Say?
Students will apply knowledge of text features to locate information in specific text to help better understand what they are reading.
Teacher reviews text features with the class
Putting the Pieces Together
Students will use what they have learned about text features and the Answer—Cite—Explain (ACE) strategy, to infer meaning from nonfiction text.