Students continue to work with Simon Schama’s article “The Shakespeare Shakedown.” In this lesson, they work together to analyze paragraph structure in the article. This is a complex text and a challenging task.

In this lesson, students begin the writing process for the End of Unit 2 Assessment, an argument essay on A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

This activity emphasizes the importance of teaching reading and writing strategies for students to use with informational text.

Students read about what it"™s like to be a Muslim teenager growing up in America at this moment, then consider ideas for countering stereotypes and Islamophobia. Lessons include guided informational readings, research and writing suggestions, videos, and resources to continue the discussion.

In this lesson students analyze comics for samples of logical, emotional, and ethical appeal (ethos, logos, pathos). Students then write a paragraph for each selected comic strip explaining how the comic strip represents the use of each rhetorical appeal.

This lesson and resource uses headline articles to help students read effectively by distilling main ideas from an informational text.

Students analyze the work of winners of the Learning Network's 2014 Student Editorial Contest as well as professional models from the Times editorial pages to learn how writers effectively introduce and respond to counterarguments. Then they write their own position pieces, incorporating counterarguments to strengthen their claims.

Look at claims and opposing claims in one graphic organizer to aid in the use of the information in writing.

Skim the provided article to determine the author's claim. Then, read the article again and complete the Evaluating Evidence worksheet to identify the evidence the author provides to support that claim and determine whether the author makes a solid case for his/her claim. Lastly, complete the Warrant Workout worksheet with your own claim, evidence, and warrants.

Students will read a text and write to justify their evaluation of the claims. This resource supports English language development for English language learners.

In response to Harriet Tubman’s request for a letter of commendation, Fredrick Douglas wrote a testimony of her character, hard work, and sacrifices for the sake of freedom from bondage while marking the differences in their leadership styles for the common cause. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this history through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

In this lesson and resource, students learn what a thesis statement is and how it relates to an informational reading.

In this lesson, students will dissect a Times column about the leadership styles of former Vice President (and Nobel Laureate) Al Gore and President George W. Bush and then write their own opinion editorial on presidential leadership.

Students work with primary documents and latter-day photographs to recapture the experience of traveling on the Oregon Trail.

This resource includes two nonfiction texts, a link to a video, and 17 text-dependent questions (including one optional constructed-response prompt for students). Also includes explanatory information for teachers regarding alignment to the CCSS.

Students to the ways in which packaging is designed to attract kids. The class begins with a discussion about packaging and how the design, promotions and product placement all contribute to make a product attractive to consumers. In a series of individual and group activities, students compare similar food products based on packaging and on taste. An optional field trip to a grocery store in suggested to see how packaging and placement affect consumer choices.

Students discuss their experiences playing free online games and then learn the costs of these "free" games in the form of paying with money sharing personal information or providing attention to advertising or branded content. Students then learn a variety of techniques for mitigating the risks and drawbacks of online games and communicate their learning by describing one of these techniques in video-game terms.

Speech writing is a rhetorical art and provides the content for these scaffolded lessons that support the increased cognitive rigor of literacy standards with presidential writings.

In this lesson and resource, students use a research platform to kick off a long-term class project on an issue relevant to the community.

In this lesson, students learn about proverbs: how they work, how they differ from cliches, how to interpret them, and how they can be culturally and personally significant. Students begin by talking about proverbs, interview family and friends to find proverbs that were not discussed in class, and figuring out the meaning of proverbs by creating a new definition of proverbs based on what they've learned.