Using different writing/drawing materials (e.g., markers, color pencils, pastels, etc.), students learn how to communicate different moods and/or feelings to support their written ideas and how authors do the same through their work.

Groups of students read and discuss American folklore stories, each group reading a different story. Using a jigsaw strategy, the groups compare character traits and main plot points of the stories. A diverse selection of American folk tales is used for this lesson, which is adaptable to any text set.

Students create a checklist outlining what effective writers do, revise his or her own writing, and engage in a written conversation to help peers with the revision process.

Students use text sets to research a topic inspired by a fiction book they have read. A text set is a collection of multiple text genres with a single focus.

After exploring several question and answer books on a variety of topics, students research a topic and create their own class question and answer book.

During interactive read-aloud sessions, students identify how an author conveys mathematical information about animals' sizes and abilities. They then conduct research projects focusing on the same mathematical concepts.

Students adopt a skeptical stance and become weather detectives who ask "Why?" and "Why not?" as they investigate the history and validity of some common weather sayings.

Using Snowflake Bentley as a model, students create a working definition of multigenre text and then use that definition to create their own multigenre piece about winter or another theme.

This lesson pairs the reading of historical fiction with nonfiction to introduce students to the large themes of history.

Students read The Jolly Postman, in which a postman delivers letters to storybook characters. They explore different types of mail and categorize letters from the book and their own mail.

This lesson uses One Green Apple by Eve Bunting to teach how characters change across a text. It will also guide students through writing an epilogue to accompany their independent book.

After examining recipes written based on students' favorite fairy tales, students research a recipe related to their favorite story, book, or fairy tale and include it in a classroom recipe book.

In this lesson, students will make text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections after reading In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson. After sharing and discussing connections, students choose and plan a project that makes a personal connection to the text.

Students will participate in Collaborative Reasoning in small groups to discuss and think critically about issues of social justice and diversity by reading current events informational articles.

Students learn the importance of crediting others for their words and ideas, and then learn the paraphrasing and citation skills necessary to avoid plagiarism.

In this lesson from a research skills unit, students read informational text, looking for supporting details. They practice skimming and scanning print resources, and scrolling through electronic resources.

In this lesson, students evaluate and rate the relevance of electronic resources as they research information about their state.

Students are guided through the process of taking notes while reading factual information, then turning those notes into new sentences and paragraphs written in their own words.

In this lesson from a research skills unit, students examine abstracts on selected books to determine their relevance and helpfulness.