Speech writing is a rhetorical art and provides the content for these scaffolded lessons that support the increased cognitive rigor of literacy standards with presidential writings.

In this lesson and resource, students use primary sources to practice analysis of primary sources.

Students will examine primary source materials on history and the supernatural which relate to Julius Caesar. By acting out the scene based on different historical understandings, they will identify facts, theories and similarities in the sources which help explain characters' motivations, decisions, and reactions.

This lesson plan introduces the practice of using primary sources; where to find primary sources, what they are, how to examine them, and how to construct a context to tell more of the story.Students will:Analyze personal artifacts as primary sources; Analyze historical primary sources; andConnect historical text with primary sources.Materials/Links Included:Primary Source Analysis ToolPrimary source setsTeacher's guide to Analyzing Primary Sources

In this lesson and resource, students use a research platform to kick off a long-term class project on an issue relevant to the community.

This resource contains lessons, Powerpoints, and activities on semicolons, colons, sentence combining, and commas.

A three-minute video defining plagiarism with examples of what it is and how to avoid it.

In this lesson, students examine and discern the writing structure of various alphabet books and improve their writing skills by creating an alphabet book using one of the structures examined.

Question-Answer relationship (QAR) is a strategy to be used after students have read. QAR teaches students how to decipher what types of questions they are being asked and where to find the answers to them. Four types of questions are examined in the QAR.

RAFT is a writing strategy that helps students understand their role as a writer, the audience they will address, the varied formats for writing, and the topic they'll be writing about. By using this strategy, teachers encourage students to write creatively, to consider a topic from a different perspective, and to gain practice writing for different audiences. Students learn to respond to a writing prompt that requires them to think about various perspectives.

In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

The story Raymond's Run is told through the eyes of Hazel Squeaky Parker, who is the fastest runner in her Harlem neighborhood. She spends the majority of her time practicing for upcoming races and taking care of her brother, Raymond, who is mentally challenged and to whom she is very devoted. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

Using a variety of magazines for this lesson, students work cooperatively to determine the main idea of a text and how details help support the main idea.

Reading Guides help students navigate reading material, especially difficult textbook chapters or technical reading. Students respond to a teacher-created written guide of prompts as they read an assigned text. Reading Guides help students to comprehend the main points of the reading and understand the organizational structure of a text.

Through various poems, students will consider the elements involved in reading poetry aloud.

In this lesson, students will read and analyze several examples of different texts, identifying the different genres represented in each. Students brainstorm alone and together what they need as readers to read and understand multigenre texts successfully. Students share findings and discuss strategies needed to comprehend, and by extension to write, these texts.

“The Real Story of a Cowboy’s Life” describes a cattle drive from the perspective of real cowboys who rode on one. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this history through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

For this interactive, students are given a set of words to rewrite using correct adjecive order. The activity tracks students' time and progress.