Based on the Guided Comprehension Model developed by Maureen McLaughlin and Mary Beth Allen, this lesson introduces students to the comprehension strategy of monitoring.

Guided comprehension moves your middle-grade students beyond decoding to become successful, independent readers. The sketch-to-stretch strategy encourages students to use "brain TV" to help them understand a text through visualization.

Guided comprehension moves your students beyond decoding to become independent readers. Generating questions to guide reading helps readers make connections with the text and supports independent comprehension of new texts.

Based on the Guided Comprehension Model developed by Maureen McLaughlin and Mary Beth Allen, this lesson introduces students to the comprehension strategy of previewing.

Questions about weather clear up when students use what they learned from their books to create a presentation to share with the rest of the class.

Students are introduced to short-vowel word families and learn to sort words alone and with a partner using the Word Family Sort activity.

Students create mental images while reading using a three-pronged approach: developing schemata and visual awareness; Watch-Read-Watch-Read (W-R-W-R), using video clips; and a strategy similar to the think-aloud approach.

Students compare the traits fact and fiction by using a Venn diagram to compare fiction and nonfiction books about Native Americans.

Students often believe that fiction writers make everything up, seldom realizing how research worms its way into entertaining writing. In this lesson, students read Diary of a Worm to find out how fact merges with fiction.

Poetry and politics combine in this lesson where students write a free verse poem in the voice of Cesar Chavez.

Students participate in a scavenger hunt for shapes; reading, writing, and discussion of shapes encourage literacy and math skills.

Students tell their life stories in this lesson about autobiographies based on family photographs.

Students' responses to this lesson will be out of this world after they've researched astronomy to write poetry and compile a poetry book.

Students examine story elements through teacher read-alouds and independent reading and then use reader-response journals and graphic organizers to prepare for the creation of their own scary stories.

Interpreting art is a subjective process. In this lesson, students write written responses analyzing a work of art and use feedback from their peers to revise or confirm their initial responses.

Like Junie B. Jones, students will be saying "Wait till you hear this" after listening to a Junie B. story and creating mystery boxes to help retell the story.

Students explore the role of prefixes, as well as their origins and meanings, and examine how the understanding of prefixes can improve comprehension, decoding, and spelling.

What makes you happy? What makes you sad? Connecting words to feelings enriches vocabulary and helps with concept development.

In an effort to help motivate students to read nonfiction, students are challenged to use a timeline to help them name the year when certain products were invented.