Rather than extending a two-page paper to five pages by restating facts, philosophizing aimlessly, or simply making things up, students engaging in this revision lesson learn how to make the cut. In Zinsser’s guide for nonfiction writing, he states, “The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components”

This Random House for High School Teachers teacher's guide includes an introduction, discussion questions, suggestions for further reading, and author biography designed to enhance student discussion of Gloria Naylor's book, Mama Day, a work that is at once a contemporary love story, a timeless generational saga, a chillingly believable tale of the supernatural, and a homage to the redemptive power of African-American tradition.

In this video from American Masters | Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise, students will explore the role of poetry in American politics, compare Angelou and Frost, and consider how Angelou’s poem reflects the challenges and concerns of the time. Discussion questions, teaching tips, and a student handout push students to engage with Angelou’s words and to think critically about her famous work.

In this video from American Masters | Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise, students will learn about the lasting impact of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and why it’s such an important piece of American literature. Students will answer discussion questions, analyze text from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and write a short essay to gain a deeper understanding of Angelou’s work.

This lesson from the Smithsonian has students taking the roles of Japanese Americans who faced internment during WWII. Students will read, sythesize and respond to first-hand accounts of internment and publish their responses on a Smithsonian blog page.

In this lesson, students will recognize and discuss the role of protest songs in the Birmingham youth movement. Then, they will identify their own political agendas and write protest songs.

This Random House for High School Teachers teacher's guide includes teaching ideas, chapter vocabulary and questions, discussion topics, comparison to other texts, and an author biography designed to aid students in exploring author Nancy Rawles' My Jim, one woman’s story of surviving slavery and Reconstruction.

In this lesson, students will summarize information found in the Alabama Driver Manual and share their findings in a multimedia presentation. Students will be responsible for self-scoring and peer scoring the multimedia presentations.

Students research the players and events that have influenced U.S.-China relations since World War II, with specific emphasis on the two countries"™ relationships with Taiwan. They then write a briefing paper, advising the president on the best policy to pursue with China and Taiwan. The article for this activity can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/09/world/us-asks-taiwan-to-avoid-a-vote-provoking-china.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm.

During this extended unit, students will explore environmental sustainability from a number of different perspectives. They will dive deep into global policies regarding the environment, specifically the dedication of different countries to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Students will review and discuss specific case studies, offering their opinion of certain practices and policies. As a summative assessment, students will create a “Call to Action” project, with the intent of raising awareness and instigating action on environmental sustainability. This unit includes language (objectives, vocabulary, and lesson modifications) that will help the teacher meet the needs of ELL students. These strategies may be helpful for other students, as well.

Students examine the impact of digital technology on print journalism and develop creative ideas for delivering news

In this lesson, students examine the impact of digital technology on print journalism and develop creative ideas for delivering news

A USA Today Education informational article on Joe Montana's 16 principles for success with included reources/ worksheets for students.

In this lesson plan, Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men is chunked into six reading sections. Each section has guiding questions for class discussion, as well as student notes and short writing assignments. This lesson will encourage deeper exploration of the book, as well as ask students to provide textual evidence for their writing and discussion.

In this activity, students will work in small groups to increase the fluency and complexity of their writing and sentence structure by first modeling the first two paragraphs from Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men and then the writing of their classmates. They will focus on "painting with words." Lastly, they will integrate improved sentence structure into an original piece of writing based on their own experience in nature.

This Random House for High School Teachers teacher's guide includes teaching ideas, chapter vocabulary and questions, discussion topics, comparison to other texts, and an author biography designed to aid students in exploring author Tobias Wolff's Old School, a magnificent, genre-defying coming-of-age novel.

This lesson is designed to assist students with improving their use of punctuation to include: commas, semicolons, colons, and exclamation points. The lesson is designed to encourage students to focus on emotions and their connections with given forms of punctuation. By examining emotions, students gain the ability to better understand the different uses of various punctuation marks. The lesson includes multiple student handouts and examples. There are also pertinent extension activities attached.

Students begin this multi-day lesson by reading letters to the editor in local, regional, or national newspapers, note common characteristics of the genre, and catagorize those characteristics. Next, they search to find news articles on topics that interest them. After choosing one on which to focus, students summarize the article, then use an online tool to write a letter to the editor. After peer editing them, students publish their letters and send.

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.

Students will watch and discuss video clips that show how two men in Chile coped with being prisoners in concentration camps during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Each student will then create a non-fiction picture book that tells the story of one of these men and provides historical context.