This lesson plan is designed as a guide that offers different ways to engage your students in the article "Fractured Lands" by Scott Anderson, published by The New York Times with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. In “Fractured Lands,” Anderson explores the modern Middle East through the eyes of six individuals, tracing their lives from the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq through the Arab spring, up to the present day. While these people come from different countries, ethnicities and socio-economic backgrounds, their interlinked narratives provide a window into a turbulent region and help the reader understand the macro-narrative of modern Middle Eastern history. Throughout “Fractured Lands” Anderson raises questions about leadership, governance, identity, dissent and the consequences of history, which enrich our understanding of current events and may also help us better anticipate the future.

Students will go "inside" the NY Times Best Sellers List to explore recent best sellers across categories, then use those lists as models to create their own in categories of their choosing. They will write one-sentence summaries for each book on their lists, then analyze and explain their choices by writing "Inside the List" articles. Ultimately, students will answer the question, "What do best-seller lists tell us about our culture?"

George Orwell's experiences as a policemen for the British Empire in India formed the basis for his early writings, including this essay. After receiving some background information on British rule in Burma as well as on Orwell, students will read the essay in order to analyze its use of metaphors, symbolism and irony.

This video from Shakespeare Uncovered explores the origins, unique characteristics and challenges presented by the 17th century Globe Theatre. Students will take a glimpse into the world of Elizabethan theater by watching actors perform scenes from Shakespeare’s plays on the stage of Shakespeare’s Globe, a modern-day replica of the Globe Theatre located one hundred feet from the original.

In this lesson, students will continue to work with Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior by Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson. Students will focus on how to pose inquiry questions based on research topics in order to guide their research.

This resource is a nonfiction, Common Core aligned reading passage with textual analysis questions about main idea, characterization, and supporting details.

In this lesson, students will analyze two sets of primary sources related to the Haitian Revolution in order to understand how it influenced and was influenced by other world events of the period, specifically the French Revolution and the Louisiana Purchase.

This Random House for High School Teachers teacher's guide includes an introduction, discussion questions, suggestions for further reading, and author biography intended to enliven student discussion of Dave Eggers' autobiography about his life after the death of both his parents, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, a thoughtful, moving, and at times uproariously funny memoir.

This lesson is 3 of 3 in a unit. In part 3, students learn how increased productivity resulted in shifts in the supply and demand for the Model T and analyze how a variety of non price determinants continue to influence the automobile market today.

This study of Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau is designed to give students an understanding of the ideas of these four philosophers and is also an opportunity for them to reflect on humanity's need for order and efforts to create stability within the social community. In the first part of the unit, activities focus student awareness on the nature of government itself and then progress to close reading and writing centered on the specifics of each philosopher's views. Large-group and small-group discussion as well as textual evidence are emphasized throughout. In the second part of the unit, students are asked to engage in creative writing that has research as its foundation. Collaboration, role-playing, and a panel discussion
are fundamental parts of the culminating activity. Options for further writing activities and assessments close the unit.

Students will collect data on the cooling of water in two different test tubes- one wrapped in wet newspaper and one in dry newspaper. They then identify trends in their data, make predictions, and describe how their experiment is similar to the body's perspiration. The task assesses students' abilities to make simple observations, gather and collect data, identify trends and make predictions, and to demonstrate their understanding by relating the experiment to real life.

Explore the geographic context of Isaac’s Storm by Erik Larson and Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston.

Students will research how the American dream has been experienced throughout history and then create a comprehensive mind map illustrating their findings.

In this lesson, students will work collaboratively to analyze how the texts refine and define the central ideas, focusing on the impact that local decisions make on a global scale.

A USA Today Education informational article on the lost Incas of the Andes with included reources/ worksheets for students.

This lesson explores the essay Self Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson, focusing on an analysis of individualism. It includes background information on Emerson, sectional analysis of the text, accompanying reading questions and activities, vocabulary terms, and a suggested follow-up assignment.

In this detailed, extensive, Common Core aligned teacher's guide to Into the Wild by John Krakauer, the curriculum framework is organized around an extended text, shorter texts and guiding questions. Teachers can choose from several charts of materials and activities to build a solid, challenging unit of study utilizing film, research, and complex but high interest text.

Students begin by evaluating the universal theme of betrayal from multiple perspectives. After reading time period scenarios as well as reflecting on personal experiences, students use critical thinking skills to explore and identify interventions for each betrayal scenario, including personal examples. Students then research Roman history as they write down thier own critical perspective of a scenario depicting plausible scenes from Roman times. As the culminating project and assessment, students will create comic strips with the Interactive Comic Creator

In this Random House for High School Teachers reader's guide, students will encounter discussion questions designed to illuminate the moving cultural biography of abolitionist martyr John Brown, written by W.E.B. Du Bois, one of the most important African-American intellectuals of the twentieth century.

Students align original FSA photographs from the 1930s and the author's own journal entries, to trace parallel elements John Steinbeck then incorporated into passages in The Grapes of Wrath.