In this lesson, students read Excerpt 2 of “Florida ‘A Paradise of Scandals’” and complete most of the Gathering Evidence of Hiaasen’s Perspective: Part 3 graphic organizer.

In this lesson, students work in triads to identify evidence of Carl Hiaasen’s perspective of Florida in Flush.

This first lesson is designed to engage students in the novel Frightful’s Mountain and the broader issue of human needs and the natural world and provide feedback.

This unit develops students’ abilities to read closely for textual details and compare authors’ perspectives through an examination of a series of texts about wolves.

Do folktales, myths, and fables all have nonhuman characters? Do they all express a lesson or moral for readers to take away? Students use a semantic feature analysis to find out in this lesson. A semantic feature analysis, a comprehension strategy that helps students identify characteristics associated with related words or concepts, is used to compare folktales, myths, and fables. Students begin with an introduction to the strategy and a teacher-directed lesson in how to use the strategy to analyze a folktale. In subsequent sessions, students continue to practice the strategy in small groups by analyzing myths and fables. After students have read and analyzed the texts, they reflect on how semantic feature analyses helped improve their understanding of their reading.

In this excerpt, thirteen-year-old Brian Robeson overcomes the initial hurdles of survival in the Canadian wilderness. As he wards off fears from his earlier encounter with a bear, Brian faces off with a porcupine in the dark of night. Realizing that self-pity would get him nowhere, Brian figures out how to use his hatchet and natural materials to start a fire. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments; writing samples included.

In this lesson students are introduced to the myths and mythology through a close read of the text "Shrouded in Myth."

In this lesson students begin to practice analyzing the central text in writing using evidence from the informational article read in the last two lessons.

This lesson continues the series of lessons scaffolding students toward writing with evidence begun in the previous lesson.

In this lesson students write an essay using the evidence they have gathered during the last two lessons to explain how the main character from the central text is on a hero's journey.

In this assessment students write an on-demand essay analyzing the main character of the central text using evidence from informational text "The Hero's Journey."

In this lesson students build background knowledge about mythology through a continued close read of the text "Shrouded in Myth."

In this lesson students begin to read the central text, The Lightning Thief and identify the narrator of the story.

In this lesson students practice drawing evidence from the text to infer about the main character and narrator, and use context clues to determine the meaning of unfamiliar words.

In this lesson students engage in a close read of a chapter from the central text to infer about the main character's thoughts and actions.

In this lesson students continue their close read from the previous lesson now focusing on vocabulary strategies including using context clues and prefixes to determine the meaning of words.

In this assessment students read a new passage from the central text and answer questions using evidence from the text to infer about the main character's thoughts and actions.

This resource includes nonfiction two texts, a link to a video, and 13 text-dependent questions (including one optional constructed-response prompt for students). Also includes explanatory information for teachers regarding alignment to the CCSS.

This webpage contains theme-based discussion prompts for each vignette in The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, as well as a selection of follow-up activities.

In this lesson, students will search for evidence that communicates four themes in Bud, Not Buddy and analyze how the evidence they chose communicates the theme.