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Can cartoon bears talk? Can fish sing? Engage your students by teaching the difference between real and make believe.

Did you know that comparative tasks improve comprehension and help students develop higher order thinking skills? In this lesson, students will compare nonfiction texts on the same topic using Venn diagrams and performance!

Understanding the big idea of a nonfiction text and being able to write a succinct summary are key fourth grade skills. This lesson focuses on summarizing a nonfiction passage in three to four sentences.

Characters, settings, and events, oh my! In this lesson, students will dig deeper into each of these components and learn to provide specific details from their texts.

Kids will love learning some fun facts about elephants while developing their reading comprehension skills. Using T-charts and Venn diagrams, they'll analyze stories and explore different characteristics of fiction and nonfiction.

This lesson will help students identify the author's point of view and purpose for writing an informational text.

Help your students absorb the details of a text and make inferences about what they read with the strategy of close reading. By reading closely, students will become better able to understand complex themes and nuances in a text.

Use this lesson to help your ELs understand main idea and supporting details. They'll analyze non-fiction word, sentence, and paragraph structures. It can be a stand-alone lesson or a support lesson to the In Search of Main Ideas lesson.

Jazz up your nonfiction reading and add a little color! Use this lesson with your students to teach them to cite text evidence as they answer questions by color coding.

Students will have a blast as they engage in interactive projects to learn about the characteristics of urban, suburban, and rural communities. This lesson will help them develop both their writing and social-studies skills.

We aren’t mind readers, but we can still figure out why the author wrote a text and what an author thinks about the topic! This lesson will teach your students the main purposes for writing.

Support your EL students in understanding and identifying the main idea and supporting details in a nonfiction text. This can support the lesson Tip of the Iceberg: Nonfiction Summary Details.

Is that fact important, or is it just interesting? Use this lesson to help your students determine importance in nonfiction text.

Young readers will love this story-filled reading comprehension lesson. It's packed with engaging exercises designed to help students become better at looking for details and annotating passages of text.

What's the difference between primary and secondary sources? This lesson will compare the two types of sources and ask students to discuss the benefits of using each source.

Roll up your sleeves and get out the magnifying glasses! In this lesson, your students will practice finding supportive details and examples in informational texts.

This lesson combines historical facts and creative writing to engage students in exercises that enhance both vocabulary and social studies knowledge.

A lesson about the Great Depression doesn't have to depress your students! They will enjoy building background knowledge for *Bud, Not Buddy* with great interactive and cooperative learning tasks.

Have you ever read a story and immediately began to compare the characters to those of your favorite story? In this lesson, students will learn to read context clues and descriptions in order to understand characters and compare them.

Increase student comprehension by teaching your students strategies to figure out the meaning of unknown words. This lesson can be used as a stand alone activity or a support lesson for the Be a Nonfiction Detective lesson.

Teach your students to look for the repeated words and phrases in a nonfiction text as they pick out important information. This lesson can stand alone or be used as a pre-lesson for the *Determining Importance* lesson.

Make history come alive with this interactive lesson! Students will have a blast presenting a "living timeline" to help their classmates understand the events of the Revolutionary War.

Not all nonfiction texts on the same topic are created equal! Using this lesson plan, your class will become familiar with nonfiction features by comparing and contrasting texts on a shared topic.

In this lesson, students will identify nouns and pronouns as they distinguish between the main idea and supporting details. It may be taught on its own or used as support for the lesson Compare and Contrast Texts on the Same Topic.

This lesson will provide students with an opportunity to become more comfortable with identifying and defining academic vocabulary words in a nonfiction text about a chicken's life cycle to support comprehension.