This lesson and resource engages students in a metacognition exercise about critical thinking and also practice research and informational writing skills using a collection of critical thinking quotes.

Nineteenth century middle-class American women saw their behavior regulated by a social system, known today as the cult of domesticity, which was designed to limit their sphere of influence to home and family. Yet within this space they developed networks and modes of expression that allowed them to speak out on issues facing the nation. Students will read four sets of passages and identify which principals of the cult of domesticity are illustrated and how. Students will also perform textual anlayses to determine audience, voice, point of view, themes, and the rhetoric used.

The lessons in this curriculum resource will guide students through reading strategies, debate, individual reflection, group activities, and discussions of The Scarlet Letter.

Students will examine the rhetoric and historical context of The Declaration of Independence as well as The Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions from the Seneca Falls convention.  Afterwards, students will apply the same rhetorical techniques gleaned from these documents to address their own contemporary concern. This lesson was developed by NCDPI as part of the Academically and/or Intellectually Gifted Instructional Resources Project. This lesson plan has been vetted at the state level for standards alignment, AIG focus, and content accuracy.

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.

After reading Richard Wright’s short novel Rite of Passage, students will demonstrate their understanding of
plot, character, and conflict by writing recommendations for the protagonists’ future to a juvenile court system
judge. Students are guided through the development of these recommendations, including attention to
counterarguments based on potential prevailing attitudes in the justice system at the time.

In this lesson, students will work collaboratively to create a presentation featuring an electrostatics demonstration. The demonstration should deal with some aspect of the three basic principles of electrostatics. Each group will also submit a written descripton of their demonstration.

Students will analyze one of Poe’s richest and most challenging works, The Fall of the House of Usher. They will gain an understanding of the construction of the work through focusing on the information revealed through the point of view of the narrator. After discussing the first five paragraphs of the work as a group, students can work independently to find other evidence to support the task. After the student(s) have had the opportunity to search the text for support, students can respond to a question that captures the goal of the lesson. This lesson was developed by NCDPI as part of the Academically and/or Intellectually Gifted Instructional Resources Project. This lesson plan has been vetted at the state level for standards alignment, AIG focus, and content accuracy.

Students read Raymond Carver’s short story "A Small, Good Thing," focusing on characterization in order to develop one of the static characters—the hit-and-run driver who causes Scotty’s death—more fully. Students use a literary graphic organizer to analyze the three major characters. They compare the story to an older version titled "The Bath." Finally, they create an original anecdote involving the driver, share their stories, and respond to each other's writing.

Students will explore solubility by designing an experiment to see if temperature affects the amount of dissolving of the sugar coating of an M&M candy. Students will also examine and compare solubility graphs for salt, sugar, and potassium chloride. At the end of the activity, students should be able to explain, on the molecular level, why increasing temperature increases the rate of dissolving. Supplemental student reading material is also provided as part of this lesson.

Students explore the qualities that make a classic writer"™s work special and then compose newspaper articles celebrating the works of different authors.

Students will learn how the field of war correspondence has evolved. Through reading chapters of Edith Warton's book, "Fighting France From Dunkerque to Belfort," students will cite examples of wartime reporting. FInally, students will create and present their own correspondence report.

In this activity, students use an interactive applet / simulation to observe and describe the nature of the electric field line pattern in the space surrounding a positive charge, a negative charge, and a configuration of two or more charges. Students will complete a formal lab write-up at the conclusion of the activity.

In this activity, students use the provided table to organize information about the average monthly time usage and energy consumption for all electrical appliances in their home. Upon collecting data and calculating costs, they draw conclusions regarding the types of appliances which are the biggest consumers of electrical energy. Teachers will need to supply the average cost of a kiloWatt-hour for the local area. Students will create a complete lab write-up at the conclusion of the activity.

In this lesson, students read "Letter From a Birmingham Jail" and "Civil Disobedience" to identify the appeals to ethos, logos, and pathos, and write a compare/contrast paper connecting the two essays.

In this lesson, students read a short story and make notations about characters to use in a compare/contrast essay.

Students develop a working definition of transcendentalism by answering and discussing a series a questions about their own individualism and relationship to nature. Over the next few sessions, students read and discuss excerpts from Emerson’s “Nature” and “Self-Reliance” and Thoreau’s Walden. They use a graphic organizer to summarize the characteristics of transcendental thought as they read. Students then examine modern comic strips and songs to find evidence of transcendental thought. They gather additional examples on their own to share with the class. Finally, students complete the chart showing specific examples of transcendental thought from a variety of multimodal genres.

In this lesson students use art and poetry to explore and understand the major characteristics of the Romantic period. After learning about the Romantic period students deepen their understanding through an evaluation of William Wordsworth's definition of poetry. Students then complete an explication of a painting from the Romantic period. Finally, students complete a literary analysis of a Wordsworth poem followed by an essay showing their understanding of Romanticism.

This resource provides a lesson designed to assist students with identifying the skills they use to read and comprehend with a small group. Afterwards, learners with use some of those strategies to read online, informational texts. As a culminating activty, students will report their discoveries through discussion pertaining to the differences in reading physical and online texts and the strategies they used.

This essay prompt can serve as a culmination of the study of Their Eyes Were Watching God. A thorough study of the text allows students to follow several motifs throughout the text like roads, fences and gates, horizons, and the stages of trees. This lesson was developed by NCDPI as part of the Academically and/or Intellectually Gifted Instructional Resources Project. This lesson plan has been vetted at the state level for standards alignment, AIG focus, and content accuracy.