In this lesson based on "Letter One" of Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, students will analyze how Rilke creates the relationship between criticism and art and the intangible and inexpressible nature of art.

In the lesson, student groups play the role of either urban families in need of fresh food or rural families in need of buyers. The role play provides a forum for discussing the concept of supply and demand in various markets, and also personalizes the historical context to engage student interest. At the end of the lesson, students consider the “losers” in westward expansion--buffalo and Native Americans--and the collusion of the U.S. government in this process.

In this lesson, students will analyze the rhetorical strategies Malcolm X used in his speeches, such as tone, emotional appeal, and descriptive language. They will also consider the strategies used by African American leaders during the Civil Rights Movement and the social implications of these strategies, contrasting the leadership and ideology of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X in the Civil Rights Movement and evaluate their legacies. They will identify personal values and use them to determine appropriate behaviors for protecting their individual rights.

In this lesson, students critically examine the concept of representative democracy and its importance to American government. Students learn the difference between descriptive and agency representation as well as analyze the current demographic trends of the North Carolina General Assembly and United States Congress.

In this lesson, students explore the historical context of Walt Whitman's concept of "democratic poetry" by reading his poetry and prose and by examining daguerreotypes taken circa 1850. Next, students will compare the poetic concepts and techniques behind Whitman's "I Hear America Singing" and Langston Hughes' "Let America Be America Again," and have an opportunity to apply similar concepts and techniques in creating a poem from their own experience.

This resource is a collection of discussion questions to supplement the non-fiction war verterans' account, We Were There by Yvonne Latty.

In this lesson students will learn to write and analyze technical writing instructiuons with consideration to audience, purpose, context, length, and complexity using common household items. After writing their own instructions, students will conduct usability tests of each other’s instructions, providing user feedback. Finally, students use this user feedback to revise their instructions before publishing them.

This Random House for High School Teachers teacher's guide includes an introduction, discussion questions, suggestions for further reading, and author biography intended to enliven student discussion of Dave Eggers' biography Zeitoun, a harrowing nonfiction account of what happened to one man and his family in the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.