Tell me about it in your own words! If students can paraphrase the information they have read, then you—and they—can be confident that they understand it.
I Used My Own Words! Paraphrasing Informational Texts
Four Simple Steps to Small-Group Guided Writing
Students will go batty about the three writing strategies they learn in this lesson centered on Nicola Davies' Bat Loves the Night.
Earth Verse: Using Science in Poetry
Students shape up their reading, writing, and listening skills in this lesson by creating original diamante, acrostic, and shape poems about science.
Critical Literacy in Action: Multimodal Texts on Global Warming
Students will really warm up to this lesson about global warming as they study multimedia materials and use a variety of comprehension strategies.
Hoax or No Hoax? Strategies for Online Comprehension and Evaluation
Are your students easily fooled? You'll find out in this lesson in which students carefully and critically examine hoax websites to determine their validity.
Nature Study Outdoor Treasure Hunts (with Spanish language option)
Students take a walk on the wild side when they research an animal and create a scavenger hunt activity for their classmates.
ABC Bookmaking Builds Vocabulary in the Content Areas
V is for vocabulary. A content area unit provides the theme for a specialized ABC book, as students select, research, define, and illustrate a word for each alphabet letter.
Persuasive Essay: Environmental Issues
How can we convince others to agree with us on important issues? In this lesson, students explore relevant environmental issues and gather information to write persuasive essays.
Weather: A Journey in Nonfiction
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.
Fact or Fiction: Learning About Worms Using Diary of a Worm
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.
Astronomy Poetry: Combining Poetry With the Content Areas
Students' responses to this lesson will be out of this world after they've researched astronomy to write poetry and compile a poetry book.
Using Science Texts to Teach the Organizational Features of Nonfiction
Students explore organizational features of nonfiction science. Students then work together to create a two-page spread using those features to present information about their local environment.
Predicting and Gathering Information With Nonfiction Texts
Students take a walk on the wild side when they develop an understanding of nonfiction texts with hands-on experiences and intense analysis.
Bringing Economic Vocabulary to Life Through Video Posters
Imagine if vocabulary could come alive with the click of a button! Students create video posters to demonstrate knowledge of new economics vocabulary.
Finding Solutions to Food Waste: Persuasion in a Digital World
Using various reading strategies and resources, students explore the issue of food waste. They also create persuasive arguments and blog posts examining this topic.
Inspire Healthful Reading Using Unconventional Texts
This minilesson encourages children to seek out and appropriately react to nutrition labels and to make healthy food choices, integrating science, math, health, and literacy.
Digital Word Detectives: Building Vocabulary With e-Book Readers
Students in grades 2-6 use digital dictionaries and other e-book tools to learn new vocabulary as they read e-books on digital reading devices.
Engineering the Perfect Poem by Using the Vocabulary of STEM
Students research engineering careers and create poetry to understand the vocabulary of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics).
What's Under the Slide? Making Inferences Using Microscopes
Students hone their critical thinking skills by learning how to make inferences from textual clues.
A Prereading Strategy: Using the Vocabulary, Language, Prediction (VLP) Approach
Students learn content area vocabulary and increase reading comprehension using the Vocabulary, Language, Prediction (VLP) approach.