In this lesson plan, students analyze important speeches from past presidents. Students then attempt to write a speech for the current president.

In this activity, students use spiral questions to analyze a primary source. Spiral questions guide students from lower- to higher-level critical thinking skills so that they become comfortable and adept at analyzing primary sources. The technique can be used with documents, photographs, and other primary sources. There are three levels of spiral questions: description, interpretation, and analysis.

Students examine the state of the print newspaper industry, then debate its future.

In this lesson, students examine the state of the print newspaper industry, then debate its future.

This lesson encourages students to consider why an author might choose to base their fictional work in nonfiction by examining the use of nonfiction as inspiration in John Steinbeck's famous novel.

This extensive resource provides standard by standard strategies for meeting the goals of each, including graphic organizers, approaches, and multiple informational texts.

In this Random House teacher's guide to Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder, students will explore three sections: Style and Structure, Comprehension and Discussion, and Personal Essays. The prompts
in the first two sections are constructed for the purpose of fostering classroom and group discussion. The intent of the Personal Essay section is to garner in-depth reflective and/or investigative individual responses.

Exploring the use of style in literature helps students understand how language conveys mood, images, and meaning. After exploring the styles of two authors, students will translate passages from one author into the style of another. Then they will translate fables into style of one of the authors.

In this activity, students develop Common Core reading skills (eg. citing textual evidence, determining the central ideas, and determining meaning of words and phrases) through a study of the history of the second amendment to the U.S. Constitution and its significance today. First, students work independently, with some class discussion, to complete a close reading of the second amendment text and related primary and secondary documents. Then, students work in groups to prepare a presidential candidate for a debate in which he/she must defend a particular position, or claim, about the meaning of the second amendment and constitutionality of gun regulation.

This resource contains a primary source about a supreme court case related to World War II. Accompanying the reading are text-dependent questions, an academic vocabulary list, and a writing prompt with student samples.

Students engage in a character study of the numerous figures created by Charles Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities. Students first compare and contrast several forms of communication: email, text message, and telephone. They then complete a character study chart that breaks down physical background, character traits, social status/background, unanswered questions about the character, and a final judgment about the character. Next, students will create text messages between numerous characters that show the relationship between the characters, their background, and plot points that they are involved in. The lesson concludes with students sharing their text messages and a discussion of the rationales behind their choices.

A teacher's guide to American Tapestry, Michelle Obama's biography. Included are chapter-by-chapter discussion questions, writing prompts, and activities.

This resource is a collection of discussion questions and activities to supplement The Autobiography of Eleanore Roosevelt.

In this lesson plan, students will combine poetry with images from the National Archives in order to explore multiple perspectives on the Vietnam War.

This template provides STEM educators and their School Media Specialists with a template and a structure for developing Text-based Inquiry units that address multiple content areas.

In this lesson, students read an excerpt from "A Raisin in the Sun" and a 2013 news article on the persistence of the problem of housing discrimination. Graphic organizers are provided for students to use as they read and discuss the two texts.

"The Scarlet Letter" is full of famous passages that probe themes like sin, redemption, guilt, revenge, and hypocrisy as they relate to female sexuality. At the same time, our modern-day news is full of stories that highlight the sexual double-standard that exists in our society between men and women. The extent to which this double-standard exists is the focus of this lesson, which uses an excerpt from Hawthorn's classic and an op-ed about once-convicted murderess Amanda Knox.

Students are presented with a paired critical reading activity uses excertps from Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and a New York Times article "˜History of Lynchings in the South Documents Nearly 4,000 Names"™ to exlplore the deep and painful history of racial injustice in the south. Included are close fiction/non-fiction analysis, varied media resources, and writing assignments.

In this resource from the New York Times, a paired critical reading activity uses excertps from Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and a New York Times article ‘History of Lynchings in the South Documents Nearly 4,000 Names’ to exlplore the deep and painful history of racial injustice in the south. Included are close fiction/non-fiction analysis, varied media resources, and writing assignments.

The film "12 Years a Slave" is based on the 1853 slave narrative of the same name. This lesson pairs an excerpt from the original text by Solomon Northup with a recent Times article that discusses Mr. Northup's narrative in the context of the antislavery literary genre. In studying these two texts together, students examine what Northup's narrative reveals about the institution of slavery.