Teacher Tuesday!

Today is my very first "Teacher Tuesday."  My goal for Tuesdays is to share whatever I can that may be useful in the classroom.  Ideally I would like to be able to add at least one item to my Teachers Pay Teachers account a week -some free, some not- and share them here.
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Last year I taught 5th grade Reading and Writing and I want to start by sharing something simple I created and started using early on with those students.  When it comes to writing, 5th grade is a transition year.  Students spend the first six months of 4th grade going through a ridiculously complex writing program that requires them to create stories and essays that, in my opinion, is not normal.  In an attempt to give the students a less strenuous year with writing, I focused on the Common Core State Standards and came up with assignments, projects, etc. that tied to other subject areas and focused mostly on non-fiction. 
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Our previous Reading series came with Time for Kids, and I used that a lot early in the year as a springboard for our writing.  Once we reviewed and discussed all the parts of a non-fiction article I created this graphic organizer and had the students use it while they were reading.  The Non-Fiction Graphic Organizer has space for new vocabulary, main idea, important details, connections, questions, and even addresses text features and author's purpose.  The way I would primarily use this in my classroom is I would assign an article, have the students complete the G.O. while reading, and then they would use what they wrote to summarize the article.  There were times when I would give a writing prompt related to the article (a response to reading type prompt) and the graphic organizer was useful for that as well.
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This is really just a basic template, but I hope that it is something that could be useful in other classrooms.