This activity features differentiation and scaffolding to help students understand the new social freedoms and new threats to the families of freedmen during Reconstruction. Students work in heterogeneous skill-level groups to analyze several primary sources and prepare to write a paragraph about freedmen's new social freedoms. The activity in the lesson is framed for several consecutive 45-minute lessons, but could be adapted to meet the teacher's needs. The activity features documents from HERB that have been edited for different skill levels; the edited documents are including in the attached PDF "New Liberties and New Threats Worksheet." New York City high school teachers Arthur Everett and Samantha Schoeller created this activity.

Students will compose a thank you note using the following RAFT (Role, Audience, Format, Topic) model.

In this lesson, the students will read and reread the passage closely combined with classroom discussion about it, students will identify why and how farming practices have changed, as well as identify Pollan’s point of view on the subject.

In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this book through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

The main character, Mr. Johnson, embarks upon quite the opposite of an ordinary day. This day he spends as a do-gooder, wandering the streets of the city, purposefully taking time to insert himself into the lives of the people he passes. His perfect day is juxtaposed the moment he returns home to his grumpy, negative wife. The irony is: most ordinary days are not filled with all great deeds, but rather a mixture of positive and negative experiences. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

In this lesson, students will dissect a Times column about the leadership styles of former Vice President (and Nobel Laureate) Al Gore and President George W. Bush and then write their own opinion editorial on presidential leadership.

This writing assessment can be used within an informational, research-based unit. Students will spend time, in class, reading myths based on natural disasters and researching a natural disaster. Students will create their own, original myth based on their independent research.

Harry Tillian’s father owns a candy and nut shop. Harry used to visit the shop with his friends every day, but his priorities change once he enters middle school. Mr. Tillian buys a talking parrot to keep him company. One day Mr. Tillian gets sick and must go to the hospital. Harry takes care of the shop while his dad is ill, and the parrot helps Harry realize how much his dad has been missing him. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

In this lesson, students reflect on some of the choices they have made and compare them to Kit's choices in the novel "The Witch of Blackbird Pond" by writing expository essays in which they discuss these choices.

This activity will set up a series of experiments that will help students identify and find physical properties of water. A discussion of what the students know (or believe they know about water) will start this activity. Once the properties are discussed, methods of testing these properties will be discussed by the instructor, leading the students into the students' development of these labs.

In this lesson, students compare and contrast characters from various texts and compile the collected information into several graphic organizers.

Behind many of the apparently simple stories of Robert Frost's poems are unexpected questions and mysteries. In this lesson, students analyze what speakers include or omit from their narrative accounts, make inferences about speakers' motivations, and find evidence for their inferences in the words of the poem.

Poets achieve popular acclaim only when they express clear and widely shared emotions with a forceful, distinctive, and memorable voice. But what is meant by voice in poetry, and what qualities have made the voice of Langston Hughes a favorite for so many people?

In this lesson, students learn about point of view by rewriting an existing narrative paragraph (using a different point-of-view). Students expand this knowledge by writing an expository paragraph, then rewriting it to reflect a different point-of-view.

The students will read and reread the passage closely, and focusing their reading through either a series of questions and discussion about the text or the structured journal approach outlined here, students will come away with a working knowledge of the digestive system, its parts, and how they function together.

In this lesson, students compare how both George and Martha Washington felt about General Washington becoming the first President of the United States. Students should complete the George Washington's Letter to Henry Knox about the Presidency and Martha Washington's Letter about the Presidency worksheets prior to beginning this activity.

This article discusses ways to use technology to guide students through brainstorming activities and organization of ideas.

In this lesson, students will read and discuss "The Hangman" by Maurice Ogden and answer questions about the poem.