Although Danny is a young adult of only 17, he is fully capable of taking his father’s boat out to sea to fish. While out on a solo trip one foggy morning, Danny encounters “something” mysterious in the water. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

Students explore what's hidden behind advertising messages by analyzing and creating parody advertisements. Students will demonstrate an understanding that advertisements don"™t necessarily tell the whole truth about a product and that advertisements are designed to deliver very specific messages to consumers.

In this lesson, students will investigate the idea of researching to deepen understanding, as well as learn the purposes and processes of using inquiry in order to develop their investigation.

In this lesson that includes 3 activities, students will learn ways to assess, annotate, and make notes on sources in order to effectively answer Inquiry Questions.

In this lesson, students will focus on organizing their research and synthesizing their analysis in order to develop an evidence based perspective of the Areas of Investigation. Students can use this perspective and Research Portfolio for creating a range of final products.

Behind many of the apparently simple stories of Robert Frost's poems are unexpected questions and mysteries. In this lesson, students analyze what speakers include or omit from their narrative accounts, make inferences about speakers' motivations, and find evidence for their inferences in the words of the poem.

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.

This is a digital anchor chart that uses the acronym CARS to help students evaluate resources.

This unit outlines a simulated research process that relies strongly on collaborative work around a common topic. A topic resource repository about prehistoric art is provided to help teachers model the process with a rich selection of sources, as well as model tools and inquiry questions.

This course was created by the Rethink Education Content Development Team. This course is aligned to the NC Standards for 6th Grade English Language Arts. 

This course was created by the Rethink Education Content Development Team. This course is aligned to the NC Standards for 6th Grade ELA.

In this lesson, students will have mini lessons on sentence structure and appropriate transitions to improve the flow of their informative consumer guides.

In this lesson, students create a multimedia PowerPoint presentation about proper telephone procedures.

In this lesson, students will examine the various social classes and learn about the critical role that slaves, freemen, and plebeians played in the day-to-day operations of the Roman Empire. Students will learn about the various social classes and the life experiences of people from these classes. As a final activity, students will complete a creative writing assignment that addresses how the Roman class system and the use of slavery may have ultimately contributed to the downfall of the Roman Empire. Video link: http://www.pbs.org/empires/romans/index.html - Go to For Educators and follow links to free video clips. The Slaves and Freemen link is broken. Use this: http://www.pbs.org/empires/romans/empire/slaves_freemen.html

Students will use scaffolding to research and organize information for writing a research paper. A research paper scaffold provides students with clear support for writing expository papers that include a question (problem), literature review, analysis, methodology for original research, results, conclusion, and references. Students examine informational text, use an inquiry-based approach, and practice genre-specific strategies for expository writing.

Students learn how to create well defined search strings and to use tools and techniques such as bookmarking, browser filters and search engine preferences to avoid unwanted material. (This four lesson unit on search skills and critical thinking teaches students how to target and specify their online searches to avoid unwanted results, how to judge whether a link, search result or website is legitimate or phony and how to find legitimate sources online for media works such as music videos and movies.)

In this lesson, students will learn about the geography and topography of China and surrounding countries, discover how ideas, cultures, and goods were exchanged through the Silk Road, relate the ideas of trade and globalization to today, and then write a travel journal entry as if they were a participant in trade along the Silk Road.

Mary Whitebird is about to turn eleven and take part in the Sioux coming of age tradition of Ta-Na-E-Ka. Literally translated as, flowering of adulthood, Ta-Na-E-Ka is a test of survival where participants are sent into the wilderness to survive for five days. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

For this lesson, students will learn how to pick a topic for a research paper. They will then think of questions they want to answer in their research paper, and use those questions to guide what they take notes on. A detailed PowerPoint explains how to use PowerPoint to organize and take notes.