A 3rd-grade lesson focused on identifying the main idea and supporting details using a 'Main Idea Mountain' theme. Students practice the 'first read' of complex texts before chunking paragraphs to summarize and find the 'big picture'.

A 4-day morning work series focusing on multiplication/division word problems and comparing/contrasting informational texts about animals.

A lesson focusing on the vowel teams 'ai' and 'ay' for the long /a/ sound, following the SPIRE Level 3 progression. Students will practice identifying, reading, and spelling words with these patterns through guided instruction and independent practice.

A formal assessment of 3.RL.2 skills using multiple-choice questions over a new folktale.

Applying recounting and moral-finding skills to a West African folktale, 'Anansi and the Pot of Wisdom'.

Analyzing how key details lead to the moral in 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf'.

A cumulative assessment where students apply all their 'Desert Detective' skills—literal details, 'how and why' explanations, and citing specific sentence evidence—to solve a final mystery.

Students master the skill of identifying the specific sentence or phrase that proves an answer in a mystery set at Painted Rock.

Students tackle 'how and why' questions, learning to link character actions to specific text evidence in a story about a mysterious cactus.