Mary Whitebird is about to turn eleven and take part in the Sioux coming of age tradition of Ta-Na-E-Ka. Literally translated as, flowering of adulthood, Ta-Na-E-Ka is a test of survival where participants are sent into the wilderness to survive for five days. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

Tasha, a thirteen year old girl has to babysit her little 7 year old brother, Junior, because her mom is getting a job over the summer. Tasha really didn't want to and would do anything but babysit Junior. Her mom gave Tasha a long list of rules. Junior basically only had one: he was to listen to his sister. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments. Includes printable copies of text.

In this lesson, students will learn strategies and activities for learning about economics, civics and government, and U.S. history text through reading, taking notes, and composing a response about capitalism through a claims and evidence based approach.

A teachers guide for five Jack Henry books by Jack Gantos (Jack Adrift, Jack on the Tracks, Heads or Tails, Jack's New Power, Jack's Black Book), including an activity to complete throughout reading, discussion questions for each book as well as questions to draw connections between themes, and ways to connect themes and key subjects in the books to other areas of education.

Many factors contributed to the eventual success of the American colonies as they revolted against British rule. American leadership, the timely support of international allies, and international respect and recognition played major roles in the struggle for independence. Several documents and engravings held by the National Archives help to illustrate these important factors that led to the founding of the United States.

This lesson focuses on the American Revolution, which encouraged the founding fathers' desire to create a government that would, as stated in the Preamble, insure domestic tranquility and provide for the common defense.

In this lesson, students study issues related to independence and notions of manliness in Ernest Hemingway’s “Three Shots” as they conduct in-depth literary character analysis, consider the significance of environment to growing up and investigate Hemingway’s Nobel Prize-winning, unique prose style. In addition, they will have the opportunity to write and revise a short story based on their own childhood experiences and together create a short story collection.

This lesson from the New York Times offers suggestions for making TheTimes a low-stress part of your classroom routine, followed by literacy strategies to help address the Standards before, during, and after reading Times content with your students.

Suggestions for making TheTimes a low-stress part of your classroom routine, followed by literacy strategies to help address the Standards before, during, and after reading Times content with your students.

This handout provides overviews and examples of how to use tone in business writing. This includes considering the audience and purpose for writing.

This teacher's guide for Totally Joe by James Howe contains discussion questions, activities, and research assignments.

This teacher's guide to Tracks by Diane Lee Wilson includes a summary of the text, discussion questions, activities, and research assignments.

To become a member of the ship’s crew, Charlotte Doyle must pass a test of climbing to the top of the mast. She faces physical and mental challenges to prove her worth to herself and the crew. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

In this lesson, students will engage in close reading to learn how people lived in the late 19th century. Students will also visualize a main character in a text, and then create an in-depth dialogue between two people, using details from the text.

In this lesson, students will use the poem, "The Turkey Shot Out of the Oven" written by Jack Prelutsky to explore verbs, synonyms, and poetry.

A handout/tutorial on how paragraphs are formed, how to develop stronger paragraphs, and how to completely and clearly express your ideas.

In this lesson, students use previewing to activate their prior knowledge and set a purpose for reading. Using a strategy called THIEVES, which is an acronym for title, headings, introduction, every first sentence in a paragraph, visuals and vocabulary, end-of-chapter questions, and summary, students are guided through a preview of a nonfiction text. After guided practice, partners work together to use the strategy to preview a chapter from a textbook.

Nadia’s parents were recently divorced and Nadia is spending the summer with her father in Florida, where Grandpa Izzy lives. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

This lesson helps students "hear" some of the diverse colonial voices that, in the course of time and under the pressure of novel ideas and events, contributed to the American Revolution. Students analyze a variety of primary documents illustrating the diversity of religious, political, social, and economic motives behind competing perspectives on questions of independence and rebellion.

In this unit from the Standford University The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute students develop a broader understanding of the struggle for equality from 1868 to the present by exploring first-person narratives from a diverse group of Americans. Beginning with a study of the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. Board of Education, students determine the criteria for identifying an event as historically significant. Students then explore the impact of the struggle for equality by interviewing people in their community and utilizing resources such as Toni Morrison’s Remember: The Journey to School Integration, Voices of Civil Rights, a national oral history project by the Library of Congress, and StoryCorps, an independent non-profit project that focuses on oral history collections of individuals’ life experiences.

Lewis Carroll’s poem tells the tale of a walrus and a carpenter who invite a group of oysters to join them for a walk on a sunny beach in the middle of the night. The walk turns out to be a cruel trick as every one of the oysters gets eaten. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.