In the short story, "Lob’s Girl," a girl, Sandy, and her dog, Lob, create an emotional bond that provides the will to survive. The story follows a chronological sequence from the time Sandy and Lob first met, how they strengthen their bond through life events, to the culminating accident where Sandy is seriously injured and Lob helps revive her in the most mysterious manner. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments; writing samples included.

The Lost City of the Aztecs is about the demise of the Aztec Empire and how Montezuma, the last Aztec emperor, reacted to the arrival of the Spaniards at Tenochtitlan in 1519. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this history through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

A series of worksheets with answer keys to help students of differing levels identify main ideas from selcted texts.

In this lesson, students will use the individual experience of Mary McLeod Bethune to analyze choice, its affects on social equality, and impact on their own life experiences.

In this lesson students examine how imagery is used to represent ideas, themes, periods of history, and make cultural connections to poem, "Still I Rise." Students will reflect through written expression how resiliency is in their lives, school, and community.

In this lesson that tightly integrates personal writing, research, and thematic response to literature, students discuss the importance of having a recorded history of humanity. As they explore this topic, they gain a deeper understanding of the horror of Jonas’s dystopian society in Lois Lowry’s The Giver. This understanding generates a keen interest in and context for the descriptive writing of students’ own history. Students gather ideas from several sources, including their own memories, interviews, and photographs, and then write their own descriptive memoirs.

In this lesson, students will read a passage of Flush and identify and interpret point of view and plot development in Flush.

In this lesson, students are asked to tread the monologue "Pask, the Runaway" in Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! and consider how the author's word choice contributes to tone and theme development.

The activities in this lesson invite students to focus on the characters from A Midsummer Night's Dream, to describe and analyze their conflicts, and then to watch how those conflicts get resolved.

This teacher's guide for The Misfits by James Howe containes discussion questions, activities, and research assignments.

This lesson will be completed once students have read the script of the play The Monsters are Due on Maple Street and watched the film adaptation on The Twilight Zone. Students will complete a learning menu that includes an appetizer, entree, and dessert. All students will complete the same starter and main course but will then have a choice for their dessert.

Having studied the archetypes of heros, students will be asked to complete a collaborative essay of a hero's journey utilizing narrative writing skills, the stages of the hero's journey, and elements, such as supernatural beings or creatures, found in mythology.  Students will bring the events of their hero’s journey to life by using dialogue, descrition, transition phrases, and sensory language.   Using a hyper-doc students will work in groups to create their collaborative story.If you want an option for students to have their own individual work have them independently complete Phase 4 of the hyper-doc.

A teachers guide for My Sisters' Voices: Teenage Girls of Color Speak Out by Iris Jacob including questions for deeper comprehension, exercises for the class, and suggestions for further reading.

A young Bedouin girl has earned the nickname Nadia the Willful because of her quick temper. Her brother, Hamed, is the only one who can tame her temper. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments; writing samples included.

Julia Alvarez recalls her family's early years as Dominican immigrants in America, and describes her reactions to the mispronunciation of her family members’ names. Eager to fit into school, Alvarez allows herself to be called American names and nicknames” although proud of her heritage and native language, young Alvarez struggles to fit in. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

This lesson takes advantage of that interest by asking students to create a soundtrack for a novel that they have read. Students begin by analyzing how specific songs might fit with a familiar story. Students then create their own soundtracks for the movie version of a novel they have read. They select songs that match the text and fit specific events in the story. Finally, students share their projects with the class and assess their work using a rubric. Examples in this lesson focus on The Beast by Walter Dean Myers, but any piece of literature can be used as the basis of students' soundtracks.

Use literacy skills to make connections among those in your classroom with this lesson that focuses on building classroom community by sharing favorite texts with one another. In this lesson, the class explores environmental print then focuses specifically on a teacher-created display on a favorite book. After exploring the teacher’s display, students write about their own favorite book, genre, or author. Students then select one of several options for making a display of their favorite book to share with the class. After creating their own presentations, students share them with the class and complete peer- or self-assessments.

This retelling of the Greek myth "Pandora's Box" includes accompanying audio and graphic illustrations. This resource can be used as scaffolding for reading comprehension, as differentiation for a multileveled classroom, and can build listening comprehension skills and vocabulary development. This resource supports English language development for English Language Learners.

The Paragraph Shrinking strategy allows each student to take turns reading, pausing, and summarizing the main points of each paragraph. Students provide each other with feedback as a way to monitor comprehension.

Students will practice visualizing and understanding that visualization is an important comprehension strategy. Students will share their visualization of the story through original artwork.