In this lesson, students will explore the various beliefs and points of view Douglass experienced as he became increasingly aware of the unfairness of his life. Students will need to consider the emotional context of words and how diction (word choice) affects an author’s message.
A USA Today Education informational article on new American citizenship exam questions with included reources/ worksheets for students.
A USA Today Education informational article on Joe Montana's 16 principles for success with included reources/ worksheets for students.
While Paul Revere's ride is the most famous event of its kind in American history, other Americans made similar rides during the Revolutionary period. After learning about some less well known but no less colorful rides that occurred in other locations, students gather evidence to support an argument about why at least one of these "other riders" does or does not deserve to be better known.
In this speech, Rudolfo Anaya celebrates the purchase of the 1 millionth library volume by the University of New Mexico. He begins by describing how as a child on summer evenings he sat under the stars and listened to the stories of los viejitos, the old ones. For Anaya the million volumes in the university’s library represent freedom because preserving access to ideas leads to the preservation and ultimately the regeneration of our cultural ideals. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.
In this lesson, students will dissect a Times column about the leadership styles of former Vice President (and Nobel Laureate) Al Gore and President George W. Bush and then write their own opinion editorial on presidential leadership.
Students work with primary documents and latter-day photographs to recapture the experience of traveling on the Oregon Trail.
This resource includes two nonfiction texts, a link to a video, and 17 text-dependent questions (including one optional constructed-response prompt for students). Also includes explanatory information for teachers regarding alignment to the CCSS.
In this lesson students study Alexander Gardner's photograph of Lincoln taken a little over two months before his death. They look for clues to Lincoln's personality and mood, read a short biography, write a poem describing what they learned about Lincoln, and create an artwork showing his character. They also learn about Civil War photographer Alexander Gardner and 19th century photographic processes.
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.
Poets achieve popular acclaim only when they express clear and widely shared emotions with a forceful, distinctive, and memorable voice. But what is meant by voice in poetry, and what qualities have made the voice of Langston Hughes a favorite for so many people?
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
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.
After reading narratives from former slaves that were recorded in the 1930's as part of the Federal Writers' Project, students conduct research on slavery and tell a story based on their findings. The lesson incorporates an exploration of storytelling techniques.
In this lesson, students will use text from Mandela's autobiography "Long Walk to Freedom" to connect with Mandela's life and words.
In this lesson, students will be determining the central idea of a text about the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. They will also examine how quotes help to develop a central idea. Next, they will be writing an objective summary. Students will then research information from NASA about becoming an astronaut, as well as quotes that support why someone should become an astronaut. Finally, students will plan and write an argumentative essay about why someone should apply to become an astronaut using claims, evidence, and commentary. To enhance this lesson with a digital focus, instead of the traditional essay format in the origial plan, students can be given the choice of several digital mediums to present their findings. This digital foucs allows for student choice, selection and/or creation of visuals to support student thinking and arguments, and customization of content for the stuent's specific audience.
This course was created by the Rethink Education Content Development Team. This course is aligned to the NC Standards for 6th Grade Math.
This course was created by the Rethink Education Content Development Team. This course is aligned to the NC Standards for 8th Grade ELA.
In this Random House teacher's guide to Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend by Larry Tye, students will explore the life of Leroy "Satchel" Paige and the history of Jim Crow era America. The guide includes indepth discussion questions and activities designed to facilitate synthesis and connection through higher level discourse and writing prompts.
Selective Highlighting/Underlining is used to help students organize what they have read by selecting what is important. This strategy teaches students to highlight/underline ONLY the key words, phrases, vocabulary, and ideas that are central to understanding the reading.