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 horror story begins when three lighthouse keepers realize that a derelict ship heading for their tiny island is filled with thousands of giant rats. The ship runs aground and sinks; the famished rats scramble onto the island, and, in time, they break into the lighthouse. The besieged men struggle to stay alive. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

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.

Fourteen year-old Greg Ridley gets into an argument with his father over his bad grades and his father forbids him to play basketball. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

This is a story of an American-born Chinese daughter, her immigrant mother and their very different beliefs and hopes. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

Tips and tools to help students start writing a paper and continue writing through the challenges of the revising process. Brainstorming can help students choose a topic, develop an approach to a topic, or deepen understanding of the topic’s potential.

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

Tips and tools to help students with anxieties about writing and how to overcome them.

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.

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

This poetry lesson uses hip hop and karaoke to inspire students to write and engage with poetry.

This lesson, Young People Working for Justice, focuses on Dr. Martin Luther King and on the role of youth during the modern African American Freedom Struggle. The activities encourage students to envision their role in creating a just world.

Students make lists of their favorite and least favorite movies and brainstorm qualities that make a film good or bad. Next, students write a movie review for a film they have seen.