As a way to support teachers with English Language Arts (ELA) instruction during the pandemic, the NCDPI ELA team created choice boards featuring standards-aligned ELA activities.The intended purpose of these choice boards is to provide a way for students to continue standards-based learning while schools are closed. Each activity can be adapted and modified to be completed with or without the use of digital tools. Many activities can also be repeated with different texts. These standards-based activities are meant to be a low-stress approach to reinforcing and enriching the skills learned during the 2019-2020 school year. The choice boards are to be used flexibly by teachers, parents, and students in order to meet the unique needs of each learner.Exploration activities are provided for a more self-directed or guided approach to independent learning for students. These activities and sites should be used as a way to explore concepts, topics, skills, and social and emotional competencies that interest the learner. 

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.

Rachel wakes up on her eleventh birthday feeling as if she’s still ten—and nine, and eight, and all the ages that came before and the day just gets worse from there. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments; writing samples included.

This is unit utilizes Historical Fiction and Nonfiction text to address standards such as determining  a theme; providing a summary; Describing how the plot unfolds as well as the character’s response; and explaining how an author develops the point of view of the narrator or speaker in a text.

In this lesson, students will draft their bulleted list of suggestions for ways to buy fish caught using sustainable fishing methods. Students draft the written content of their informative consumer guide using their Quote Sandwich graphic organizers.

In this lesson, students will draft their newspaper article based on the carefully selected factual information and eyewitness quotes they gathered on their Newspaper-Article-Planning graphic-organizer.

In this lesson, students will review and revise the final drafts of their essays.

In this lesson, students finish their end of unit assessment by incorporating revisions from the previous lessons to create a final literary analysis.

In this lesson, students will evaluate the eyewitness quotes they have collected in order to choose those most relevant to the factual information while also being compelling.

In this lesson, students will evaluate the information/quotes they recorded on their Researching graphic organizers and identify relevant information to use in their consumer guides.

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.

The North Carolina Museum of Natural Science created this resource as part of an online workshop series, but you are welcome to use or modify it for your classroom. It includes a video and written directions for creating nature journals and tips for incorporating them into your classroom. For information on taking any the Nature Neighborhood online workshops for CEUs or EE credit, visit: https://naturalsciences.org/learn/educators/online-workshops.

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.

In this lesson, studuents will write their best version of their draft, including a quote that captures the spirit of their rule to live by.

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.

In this lesson, students use their research to determine the who, what, where, when, and why of their newspaper article.