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Building an argument takes planning, skill, and a good topic. This engaging video demonstrates with clever illustrations and narrative coaching, the steps in building an exemplar essay, from creating a hook and analyzing evidence, to convincing the audience with an actionable conclusion.

This resource allows students the opportunity to develop an essay outline and is best used during the planning stage of the writing process. 

These lessons challenge students to write original stories using alphabetical order. For students who are still developing a basic understanding of alphabetization, the entire class can write one story, beginning each page with a new letter. Challenge more advanced students to write their own stories or to compose the words in each sentence in alphabetical order. Students can illustrate their texts in class or at home with their families. Although this lesson was primarily written for a first- or second-grade class, modifications can be made to allow kindergarten students to have success with alphabetizing as well.

The teacher will present an informational text from the website, ReadWorks. The students and teacher can interact with this non-fiction text by annotating the text digitally. The students will answer the questions associated with the article as an assessment. This learning activity can be used to provide information regarding geologic events that happen over short and long periods of time, serve as reinforcement after students have already learned this concept, or be used as an assessment at the conclusion of a lesson.

Understanding how to support a point is important both in reading and writing. In Slime Lab, you're in control of a crazy scientist with a slime gun. His laboratory is overrun by robots and other traps. Try and find all 3 supporting details for the main idea through 10 levels of sci-fi adventure.

Learn how to identify theme in a literary work in this short animated video from WNET.

The reading community recognizes nonfiction as vital to early learners. This concept is relatively new, and most primary teachers have little experience with how to introduce nonfiction to their students and use it as part of the reading curriculum. This lesson supports second-grade teachers in introducing nonfiction to their students and using it for informational purposes. Students develop an understanding of nonfiction through peer interaction and hands-on experiences with books. They use graphic organizers to record their thinking and new learning.

The teacher will present an informational text from the website, ReadWorks. The students and teacher can interact with this non-fiction text by annotating the text digitally. The students will answer the questions associated with the article as an assessment. This learning activity can be used to explain that fossils can provide evidence about past environments and organisms. 

In this classroom resource, students will learn about the simple past tense of a verb. The simple past tense indicates an action that began and ended in the past. The past tense is formed by using the helping verb will (or shall) with the base form of the verb. This resource offers videos, games, and worksheets to help further understand the concept taught in this lesson.

In this media gallery, students will interact with clips from Ken Burns' Mark Twain. After watching these clips and engaging with the associated discussion questions, students will analyze how Mark Twain's (Samuel Clemens') perspective and point of view evolved over time.

This resource provides an opportunity for students to build background knowledge about the author and use that knowledge to analyze his cultural perspective. 

Francis Cugat's 1925 cover art for The Great Gatsby and The View of Toledo by El Greco, mentioned in the final pages of the novel, are the focus of pre-reading and post-reading activities in this lesson plan. Before reading the novel, students tap visual literacy skills as they analyze the artwork commissioned for the novel's cover. Based on their analysis, students make predictions about the plot and imagery of the novel. After completing their reading, students revisit the visual imagery and artwork and discuss how their interpretations have changed. Next, students explore allusion by analyzing an El Greco painting alluded to in the novel and discussing what the allusion means. Finally, students conclude their study by selecting images and designing their own cover for the novel.

Get close-up and grossed-out as you learn about the wonderful way worms work in our environment. Learn vermicomposting, and dig into how an author may write text to support his or her point of view.

Helping verbs are a special category of verbs. They do not mean anything on their own. They just "help" the main verbs to express their full meanings, and are necessary for the grammatical structure of a sentence. In this classroom resource, students will learn about helping verbs. This resource offers informational material, videos, games, quizzes, and worksheets to help further understand this concept.

In this interactive lesson, students learn the basics of how stories are structured, gain vocabulary about storytelling elements, and explore how the arts, specifically drawing, can be a valuable way for students to tell stories. By the end of the lesson, each student will have written a story with a clear setting, conflict, and resolution. They will have reflected on the process of storytelling, and are given the (optional) opportunity to create a comic.

This resource guides students as they create an original narrative. 

Knowing the elements of a story aids students in their understanding of what is taking place in the book or novel. When students comprehend the story elements of characters, setting, problems, events, and solutions, they become more involved in the story and take a greater interest in details. In this lesson, students use a six-paneled comic strip to create a story map, summarizing a book or story that they've read either read as a class or independently. The story strips that result provide a great way to evaluate student's understanding of important events and elements in a novel. The students enjoy the artistic aspect as well!

This lesson plan uses Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are as an example to model the process of creating the story map comic strips; however, any book you and your students have explored recently that demonstrates the elements of character, setting, problem, events, and solutions will work.

Students will analyze Sebastiano Ricci's Perseus Confronting Phineus with the Head of Medusa.  They will discuss the story elements found in the painting, such as setting, characters, and actions.  Students will be given a print of a painting and write a narrative based on the characters and setting.  Based on their narrative, students will illustrate what happened before and after the given painting.    

In this short practice, students review how to determine whether the evidence that backs up a claim in a reading is sufficient, relevant, and credible and practice evaluating example passages.

Students read, analyze, and discuss medieval English ballads and then list characteristics of the genre. They then emphasize the narrative characteristics of ballads by choosing a ballad to act out. Using the Venn diagram tool, students next compare medieval ballads with modern ones. After familiarizing themselves with ballad themes and forms, students write their own original ballads, which they will perform in small groups. Finally, students engage in self-reflection on their group performances and on the literary characteristics of their ballads.

Balloon Phonics is a phonics reading game for young children which focuses on three-letter words (consonant-vowel-consonant or CVC). It is aimed at children who are working on the phonemes in Stage 2 of the Letters and Sounds program.

Each of the letter sounds is supported by a sound button so the game provides practice for children to use the sounds they have learned so far and also learn new sounds. It also helps them to practice oral blending of sounds and the segmentation of words into their individual sounds.

There are three different games to choose from initial sounds, middle sounds, and end sounds. Working through the levels helps children to progress through the different stages of blending sounds together.

In this unit, students explore a variety of resources—texts, images, sounds, photos, and other artifacts—to learn more about the Holocaust. Beginning with journal writings and a picture book to introduce the central issues, the unit focuses on student-centered inquiry. Students explore a range of print and non-print resources through extensive online inquiry activities. Progressing from individual work to a group learning project, the unit culminates in publishing the group's findings in topic-based newspapers. 

The lesson includes complete lists of picture books, read-aloud books, reference texts, and online sites and collections that allow teachers to customize the activities to fit the available resources and students' specific research interests.