Students will watch and discuss video clips that show how two men in Chile coped with being prisoners in concentration camps during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Each student will then create a non-fiction picture book that tells the story of one of these men and provides historical context.

This lesson is one part of a four lesson unit on Shakespeare Stealer. This theater and language arts lesson offers intellectual, creative and interpretive opportunities. Students will analyze and compare the puns and word play in selected scenes from the plays, The Shakespeare Stealer by Gary L. Blackwood and Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare. Students will then read scenes from each play in groups and interpret their meanings to prepare for a performance of the scene. The lesson culminates with students writing a short essay explaining how the playwrights used puns and word play to give their characters wit.

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.

Power Notes is a strategy that teaches students an efficient form of organizing information from assigned text. This technique provides students a systematic way to look for relationships within material they are reading. Power Notes help visually display the differences between main ideas and supportive information in outline form. Main ideas or categories are assigned a power 1 rating. Details and examples are assigned power 2s, 3s, or 4s.

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.

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. 

A Seed Discussion is a two-part strategy used to teach students how to engage in discussions about assigned readings. In the first part, students read selected text and identify "seeds" or key concepts of a passage which may need additional explanation. In the second part, students work in small groups to present their "seeds" to one another. Each "seed" should be thoroughly discussed before moving on to the next.

This activity supports English language development for English language learners. This activity introduces students to opinions and debate. Students work in groups to prepare arguments for a topic. Students present their arguments and comment on the arguments of the opposition group. Students use the language of opinion to express agreement and disagreement. Students listen, speak, read, and write in this lesson.

Students examine the state of the print newspaper industry, then debate its future.

In this lesson, students examine the state of the print newspaper industry, then debate its future.

In this lesson, students are introduced to the genre of American tall tales. Students are exposed to several traditional tall tales, then prompted to write an original tall tale set in contemporary America. The tall tale must address a current event or issue and must feature a "larger-than-life" main character. The students use exaggeration and hyperbole to portray the way in which the main character resolves the issue or problem. Students then dramatize their tall tales for the class.

A teaching guide for Harper Lee's classic To Kill A Mockingbird. Includes discussion questions, vocabulary, writing and discussion prompts and activities.

Students will explore how an artist emphasized the narrative in a work of art that depicts a single moment from the story. They then write a newspaper article, using visual clues in the painting to imagine how the narrative depicted many have unfolded.

Students use a tuning protocol to give and receive peer-to-peer feedback on student writing in a structured, safe environment.

In this lesson, students use previewing to activate their prior knowledge and set a purpose for reading. Using a strategy called THIEVES, which is an acronym for title, headings, introduction, every first sentence in a paragraph, visuals and vocabulary, end-of-chapter questions, and summary, students are guided through a preview of a nonfiction text. After guided practice, partners work together to use the strategy to preview a chapter from a textbook.

Students can use the ADDIE Model Template to plan their project-based learning assignment.

In this unit from the Standford University The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute students develop a broader understanding of the struggle for equality from 1868 to the present by exploring first-person narratives from a diverse group of Americans. Beginning with a study of the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. Board of Education, students determine the criteria for identifying an event as historically significant. Students then explore the impact of the struggle for equality by interviewing people in their community and utilizing resources such as Toni Morrison’s Remember: The Journey to School Integration, Voices of Civil Rights, a national oral history project by the Library of Congress, and StoryCorps, an independent non-profit project that focuses on oral history collections of individuals’ life experiences.

This "jigsaw" activity will give students the opportunity to work in groups to summarize a 1 to 2 page informational text. It "jigsaws" down to 1 class summary and can be done in 2 or 3 days.

In this lesson, students will learn general facts about the voting process and its importance in a democratic form of government. They will research and locate information on the U.S. Constitution and the Amendments that altered voting rights throughout U.S. History. They will become familiar with the importance of voter registration and voting rights while understanding the role government plays in a student’s daily life. They will produce a plan of action, boosting awareness of voter participation and create a computer graphic campaign poster to encourage voter participation and voting awareness.