This teacher's guide for Lion Island: Cuba's Warrior of Words by Margarita Engle contains information about the book, discussion questions and prompts, activity suggestions including a readers theater, and ways to connect the themes in the book to other subjects.
This is a collection of poetry by African American author Paul Laurence Dunbar. Dunbar's work frequently features a conversational tone, innovative rhetorical structure, and a colorful use of both dialect and mainstream English. Dunbar was among the first nationally successful African American writers.
Source: Dunbar, P.L. (1913). The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar. New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company.
In this lesson, students will use the individual experience of Mary McLeod Bethune to analyze choice, its affects on social equality, and impact on their own life experiences.
This teacher's guide for The Misfits by James Howe containes discussion questions, activities, and research assignments.
The students will explore reading strategies using the think-aloud process as students investigate connections between the life and writings of Edgar Allan Poe. The unit, which begins with an in-depth exploration of “The Raven,” then moves students from a full-class reading of the poem to small-group readings of Poe’s short stories (“The Black Cat,” “Hop-Frog,” “Masque of the Red Death,” and “The Fall of the House of Usher”). The unit concludes with individual projects that explore the readings in more detail.
When a sudden and inexplicable force causes everything to stop working on Maple Street, the people there begin to wonder who or what is responsible. Fear begins to invade each person’s mind. This behavior reveals that the real monsters on Maple Street are the people themselves and the fears and prejudices they harbor. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.
This lesson will be completed once students have read the script of the play The Monsters are Due on Maple Street and watched the film adaptation on The Twilight Zone. Students will complete a learning menu that includes an appetizer, entree, and dessert. All students will complete the same starter and main course but will then have a choice for their dessert.
Students will read a tsunami myth based in Japan. They will analyze the effect of the setting on character and plot details. Then, they will rewrite the myth to take place in an alternative location.
A teachers guide for My Sisters' Voices: Teenage Girls of Color Speak Out by Iris Jacob including questions for deeper comprehension, exercises for the class, and suggestions for further reading.
This resource includes six text-dependent questions, one constructed-response writing prompt, and explanatory information for teachers regarding alignment to the CCSS and a mini-assessment.
After reading the narrative poem, “The Walrus and the Carpenter†by Lewis Carroll, students use a comic strip format to study the organization and presentation of ideas and supporting details in the plot sequence of the poem.
To facilitate students' thinking and problem-solving skills, this lesson tasks students with turning a plot scaffold into a written narrative. Students learn kinesthetically by acting out the scaffold "script" while collaborating with others to determine character motivations and dialogue. Students transition from actors to writers by having mental conversations with the characters they have created and letting their characters dictate how the story will evolve. Students are also prompted to insert imagery and use proper grammar in their written narrative.
In this lesson, students have the opportunity to deepen and refine their understanding of prepositions, including some of the more confusing standard usage guidelines, while enjoying the vivid pictures of Ruth Heller. After reading Behind the Mask, students discuss the book, focusing on the use of prepositions in the text. Taking those experiences as a reader, students continue to engage with the prepositions by composing prepositional poems, modeled on the text of Behind the Mask. To conclude the project, students create study guides that demonstrate their more advanced understanding of prepositions.
This lesson will be completed once students have read the script of the play A Raisin in the Sun and watched the film adaptation. Students will complete a learning menu that includes an appetizer, entree, and dessert. All students will complete the same appetizer and entree but will then have a choice for their dessert.
Through various poems, students will consider the elements involved in reading poetry aloud.
This two week unit will have students analyze and then write their own 2 Minute Mystery stories. Students will immerse themselves in the genre of 2 Minute Mysteries, learn mystery terms, identify literary devices, and eventually write their own mysteries.
This course was created by the Rethink Education Content Development Team. This course is aligned to the NC Standards for 7th Grade English Language Arts.
This course was created by the Rethink Education Content Development Team. This course is aligned to the NC Standards for 7th Grade ELA.
A young girl, Sarah Stout, despite her father’s request, chooses not to take out the garbage, and soon realizes that there are serious and far-reaching consequences to her choices. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.
Story Maps are used for teaching students to work with story structure for better comprehension. This technique uses visual representations to help students organize important elements of a story. Students learn to summarize the main ideas, characters, setting, and plot of an assigned reading.