Links to 44 lessons and activities that build student skills in standard SL.3.2: Determine the main ideas and supporting details of a text read aloud or information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively, and orally.
Links to 75 lessons and activities that build student skills in standard SL.4.4: Report on a topic or text, tell a story, or recount an experience in an organized manner, using appropriate facts and relevant, descriptive details to support main ideas or themes; speak clearly at an understandable pace.
Shadows are all around us.Students will use reading comprehension strategies to distinguish between fantasy and reality.
Students will read an article and determine the author's point and identify the reasons the author gives to support his or her point. This lesson requires analysis by the students and a great deal of higher-order thinking as they evaluate the author's point and reasons. Includes guided practice work, a printable graphic organizer, and videos of the lesson in action.
Students will plan a paragraph that states their opinion and cites evidence to justify their opinion about an informational text. This lesson uses biographies since students can easily be able to write down factual information from the text, which usually follows an easier, narrative-type of storyline than many informational texts. Students will then be able to formulate an opinion about certain aspects of the story based on those facts. Videos of the lesson in action are provided.
Students need to have lots of opportunities to share their opinions based on text. In this lesson, the teacher will read the story, Jack and the Beanstalk, multiple times before the students create their opinion. The detailed process of modeling this skill, an example of a completed student's work, and a video of the lesson are provided.
Bibliomania provides the complete text of Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer." Text is separated into chapters, and is an excellent example of regionalism, satire, theme, and irony.
This interactive resource adapted from NASA describes the different temperature, precipitation, and vegetation patterns in seven biomes: coniferous forest, temperate deciduous forest, desert, grassland, rainforest, shrubland, and tundra.
Throughout the day, your nervous system monitors and makes endless adjustments to your body's basic systems--all to keep you alive. This interactive feature illustrates the complexity of such a task.
Read the full text of Anne Bronte's 1848 novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. An introductory note discusses the book and author.
In this interactive activity from Shedd Aquarium, students will build a fish and then release it into the reef to search for food and evade predators. Students will try different combinations and observe how each kind of fish has unique adaptations that help it survive in its habitat.
In this lesson plan students will read a text from a number of different perspectives which will result in a greater understanding of it. This is a good strategy to use to guide students through multiple readings of a text. Lesson plan indicated for 3rd grade and up.
This article provides links to six web sites that provide an overview of cause/effect relationships, graphic organizers, and teaching strategies for elementary teachers.
This interactive feature describes some of the most important structures and functions of the cell membrane.
Learn about the history of editorial cartooning as a unique and powerful form of opinion journalism and practice analyzing cartoons from the 1700s to the present day. A free educator account is necessary to assign this Checkology lesson.
Select from scenes or the entire text of Shakespeare's comedy, "Love's Labour's Lost." No commentary accompanies this text.
This is the text for Act 2, Scene 1 of Macbeth by William Shakespeare; links to other scenes are provided.
This is the text of Macbeth Act 4, Scene 1 by William Shakespeare; links are provided to the rest of the scenes.
This screencast offers several methods to help readers spot and fix redundancy in their writing. She discusses why concise writing is important, and specific ways to edit for a more expressive, concise text. Includes short quiz. [3:32]
In this lesson, students will examine mass media critically and become aware of how much advertising is around them. They will realize the impact media has on social equality, what people buy, and on culture.