Featuring the India Arie song "I Am Not My Hair," this lesson takes students through the pre-writing, production, and editing phases of an informative essay.

In this reflective essay, Chief Dan George compares his native North American culture with that of white culture. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this essay through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

This lesson provides an opportunity for students to not only read and view the importance of choosing career choices now, but gives them an opportunity to write about their future career goals and think about the best way to achieve them starting now.

Assess students' understanding of scientific inquiry including the following skills: observation, background research, scientific procedures (including investigation design, measurement techniques, and error analysis), data collection, data display, scientific questions, formulating an hypothesis. Students will design and carry out an investigation to test which material is the best insulator; they will predict which way heat energy will flow in a system and analyze the flow of energy in a system from one point to another and from one form to another.

In this lesson, students are drawn into post-Revolutionary Philadelphia during the midst of the infamous yellow fever epidemic of 1793 by reading Laurie Halse Anderson's novel Fever 1793. Use this novel as supplemental reading to assist students in developing their understanding of and interest in colonial times, while heightening their reading skills and ability for higher order thinking.

This lesson is to introduce students to the Islamic religion and the spread of Islam. The overarching goal is for students to find the commonality in the monotheisms and gain an appreciation and tolerance for each religion.

Jabberwocky is an epic poem told through nonsense words. The poem relates a father’s quest for his son that involves the slaying of a beast (The Jabberwock). The poem charts the son’s progress from his departure to his successful return. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this poem through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

Students will work collaboratively to gather information about various groups of gelatinous zooplankton. They will be able to compare and contrast at least three different groups of zooplankton organisms and describe how gelatinous zooplankton fit into marine food webs. Groups will prepare a brief written report summarizing the information they have found and orally present to the rest of the class.

Students conduct Web searches on open-ended questions and draw on their experiences to develop guides to searching effectively and finding reliable information online.

This autobiographical piece tells what a neat, tidy rule-follower this author was in his youth—except for his yo-yo. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

This resource supports English language development for English language learners. In this lesson, students describe the steps people took to eliminate segregation in U.S. schools. Students use a graphic organizer to analyze primary source photographs as a class, in pairs, and individually. After comparing their work in groups, students write a paragraph citing evidence from their graphic organizer to explain their understanding.

Tapping existing texts for models is one of the best strategies for writer’s workshop. This lesson examines types of leads in prominent young adult literature and asks students to search for great leads and then try their own hand at writing leads. Students rank several leads from novels as they are read aloud, and then discuss their rankings. Working in small groups, students read alternative leads from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. They then act as a marketing group to select the best lead. Next, students create two new leads for a novel, using different strategies for each. Finally, students apply this process to their own writing, working in pairs to create two alternative leads to something they have written.

In this lesson, students will write their planned body paragraphs for their literary analysis of A Long Walk to Water.

In this lesson, students research Old West figures using both electronic and print sources. They then use an online tool to compile and organize reading notes, research, and related ideas. The information that is gathered is then presented in a student-constructed driver’s license that includes who, what, when, where, and why they are important in United States history. This activity offers an alternative to the traditional research paper, as well as an opportunity for students to share their projects with their classmates.

"Life Without Gravity," a nonfiction selection, is designed to help students become familiar with the characteristics of an expository essay and how weightlessness affects the body. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

Students will have an opportunity to develop such "live interviews" with ancient athletes; working in small groups, they will produce a script based on the results of their research and they will perform the interview for other students in the class.

In his essay, Mandela explains his shifting understandings of freedom based on different stages in his life. Mandela explains how his perceptions of freedom evolved from wanting freedom for just himself to fighting for freedom for others, and concluding that denying freedom to others robs the oppressors of their own freedom. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

In this lesson, students will use the individual experience of Mary McLeod Bethune to analyze choice, its affects on social equality, and impact on their own life experiences.

In this lesson students examine how imagery is used to represent ideas, themes, periods of history, and make cultural connections to poem, "Still I Rise." Students will reflect through written expression how resiliency is in their lives, school, and community.

The emphasis of this lesson is on history and research rather than literature, selections from Jack London's The Call of the Wild are used to provide focus and structure for students' research in online databases of primary sources, and to serve as models of vivid narrative prose for students' own stories.