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

A guideline for teachers to compare the works of Edgar Allan Poe and Ambrose Bierce and discuss how their narration choices affect the piece and the reader.

In this lesson, students engage in a close reading of Hopper's painting and an Edward Hirsch poem to explore the types of emotion generated by each work in the viewer or reader, and how the painter and poet each achieved these responses.

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

In this lesson, student will draft both the introductory and concluding paragraphs for their "My Rule to Live By" evidence-based essay.

This lesson plan facilitates discussion with students about the challenges that faced George Washington as the first President of the United States.

In this lesson, students create text sets and use them to practice three strategies for reading for information. Students select a topic they want to explore and work in small groups to compile a set of texts related to their topic.

In this lesson, students analyze and discuss familiar superheroes and super-villains to expand their understanding of character types and conventions. Then students consider social issues that confront their everyday reality and respond by incorporating those issues into the creation of their own superheroes or super-villains as well as the settings the superheroes or super-villains operate in.

This lesson provides hands-on differentiated instruction by guiding students to search for the literal definitions of figurative language using the Internet. It also guides students in understanding figurative meanings through the use of context clues and making inferences.

This is an excerpt from "Tomb Robbers" a story based on Ch’in Shih Huang Ti, the first emperor of China. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

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

In this activity, students define common forms of government, compare common forms of government and identify real-life examples of each.

In this lesson students do a close reading of “Learning to Read,” a poem by Francis Watkins Harper about an elderly former slave which conveys the value of literacy to blacks during and after slavery. The activities also prompt students to examine the nature of literacy in the 21st century and the value they put upon it.

Franklin R. Chang-Diaz is an immigrant from Costa Rica who began thinking about space at age seven when the Soviet Union launched the first satellite into space. After going through many obstacles he was accepted to NASA and became “the first Hispanic to be in the space program for the long run". In this CCSS lesson, students will explore his story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments; writing samples included.

In this lesson, students will interpret primary source documents that depict what Isaac Newton did while experimenting with light. From this, students will be able to understand where rainbows come from and how a rainbow is formed. From this idea, students will be able to connect the ideas brought about by Newton with the electromagnetic spectrum.

Students will read scientific text about top predators in Arctic marine ecosystems and how they may be affected by global climate change. Students will work individually or collaboratively to write a report based on the scientific text they have read and participate in a large-group discussion session based on their analysis.

In this lesson students continue to build background knowledge about myths and legends through reading informational text.

In this lesson students consider what makes a myth a myth through comparing “Shrouded in Myth” read in unit 1 to  “Cronus.”

In this lesson, students dig deeper into Paragraphs 20–22 in order to answer text-dependent questions. This is their final day to work with the Steve Jobs speech.

In this end of unit assessment, students read an excerpt from President Barack Obama’s Back-to-School Speech from 2009. They independently apply the same reading strategies and skills they practiced in reading and analyzing the Steve Jobs speech.