In "Paradox and Dream," a 1966 essay on the American Dream, John Steinbeck writes, "For Americans too the wide and general dream has a name. It is called "the American Way of Life.' No one can define it or point to any one person or group who lives it, but it is very real nevertheless." Yet a recent cover of Time Magazine reads "The History of the American Dream " Is It Real?" Here, students explore the meaning of the American Dream by conducting interviews, sharing and assessing data, and writing papers based on their research to draw their own conclusions.

Students are prompted to challenge their notion of synonyms being words that "mean the same" by investigating key words in Robert Frost's poem, "Choose Something Like a Star." First, they build an understanding of connotation and register by categorizing synonyms for the title word, "choose." Then they develop lists of synonyms for words of their choice elsewhere in the poem and collaborate on a full analysis, focusing on the relationship between word choice and the elements of speaker, subject, and tone.

ClassDojo is a positive approach to manage behaviors, track homework, create portfolios, and communicate with parents and students.

In this lesson, students will revise their narratives using varied syntax and transitional words and phrases.

Clarifying one’s identity is a process that goes on throughout life. In this poetry lesson, students will read, analyze and discuss Adrienne Rich's “Diving into the Wreck” as part of the complicated process of finding, and defining oneself.

A concept sort is a strategy used to introduce students to the vocabulary of a new topic or book. Teachers provide students with a list of terms or concepts from reading material. Students place words into different categories based on each word's meaning. Categories can be defined by the teacher or by the students. When used before reading, concept sorts provide an opportunity for a teacher to see what his or her students already know about the given content. When used after reading, teachers can assess their students' understanding of the concepts presented.

In this lesson, students engage in a choral reading of Shakespeare in an effort to better understand his works. By reading rearranged character lines - sometimes out of context - students see new sides to characters in Shakespeare plays they have already read.

Students learn to understand unfamiliar terms using context clues. Students will read an excerpt from the Gettysburg Adress in order to practice and improve this skill.

This quick activity assists learners with improving their understanding of unfamiliar words by using context clues. Students will also use their knowledge of parts of speech to assist them with deciphering meaning of highlighted terms.

In this lesson, teachers scaffold student reading of websites that highlight science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers. Before choosing a text for close reading, the teacher models how to "read" the variety of texts and features of different websites, including images and interactives. Then the teacher models a close reading with students, setting a purpose and asking text-dependent questions to help students find evidence, use inferencing skills, and peer edit.

In this lesson students view examples of applealing blogs, learn the basic elements of blog creation, and then create a blog from the perspective of a fictional character. Students demonstrate their understanding of the text by including images, quotations, links, and commentary on their blogs. Students then help one another develop their blogs by acting as editiors during the creation stage and reviewing one another's blogs upon completion.

Students analyze characters by noting the ways in which defining moments shape their personalities in William Golding's Lord of the Flies. Students will chart changes, note the “direction” of their characters, support their conclusions with textual evidence, and present their findings.

In this lesson, students use focused prewriting strategies to explore content and ethical issues related to a persuasive assignment. These strategies work best after students have established their topic and audience and have begun exploring their rhetorical (writing) situation as it relates to a specific, local problem about which they have some knowledge.

Some people question whether Shakespeare really wrote the works that bear his name – or whether he even existed at all. Could it be true that the greatest writer in the English language was as fictional as his plays? This four-minute video shows how a linguistic tool called stylometry might shed light on the answer.

Students will read and analyze sonnets to discover their traditonal forms. Students will chart the poems' characteristics, including the poetic features and their emtional responses to the poems. Then they review the details for similarities, deducing traditional sonnet forms that the poems have in common. After this introduction, students write original sonnets, using one of the poems they have analyzed as a model.

In this lesson students explore ekphrasis, writing inspired through art. Through discussion poems inspired by works of art, students examine ways in which poets can approach a piece of artwork. Students then research piece of art that inspires them and in turn, compose a booklet of poems about the pieces they have chosen.

This resource provides a lesson that tasks high school students with assisting elementary level students to gain a deeper understanding of the expeditions of Lewis and Clark. The lesson is framed around the work, How We Crossed the West. As a culminating activity, the elementary students will produce a festival to prove what they have learned to the high school students.

This resource provides a lesson wherein students will seek to apply the B-D-A (before-during-after) reading comprehension strategy while they examine resources pertaining to disabilities.

All Quiet on the Western Front ends with a startling and ironic conclusion. This ending introduces students to situational irony. After discussing the definition and several examples of situational irony, students explore the novel’s concluding passage. Students next choose a possible alternate ending for the book that could still be an example of situational irony. They then retitle the book and rewrite its ending, maintaining the original ironic tone and weaving their new title into the ending as Remarque does. Finally, students design new, symbolic covers for the book, which feature their new titles.

This lesson will help students identify the various uses of language and understand their appropriateness within context. Students participate in journal writing as well as writing literacy narratives describing multiple uses of language. The lesson is designed to accompany a ready of "Mother Tongue"; however, the lesson may be used in conjunction with a study of other writings in English by authors who write or speak English as a second language.