This lesson provides additional scaffolding for students as they learn how to take notes using the structured notes format while reading To Kill a Mockingbird.

This lesson continues to prepare students to write End of Unit 2 assessment. Today, students use their Atticus note-catchers and their understanding of Atticus as a character to weigh the evidence and craft the claim for their argument essay.

In this lesson, students write the draft of their essay about Atticus’s decision to defend Tom Robinson.

In this lesson, students will work with vocabulary words, mostly adjectives, from all the previous chapters in the novel in an activity called I Have/Who Has. This activity enables students to practice listening skills and work with a full set of 25 words while being responsible for only one or two words to participate in the activity. Students will also answer text-dependent questions about Chapters 11 and 13 using Three Threes in a Row.

In this lesson, students will closely read to better understand Atticus as a character by comparing his and Mr. Gilmer’s approaches to cross-examination of witnesses.

In this lesson, students will use the Written Conversation protocol to synthesize the various reactions of characters to the verdict.

In this lesson, the class will complete a Frayer model for the word integrity, a key idea in the novel. Understanding integrity is integral to understanding Atticus’s character. It is also deeply connected to taking a stand and the Golden Rule.

In this lesson, students complete an on-demand mid-unit assessment. The questions posed in the assessment have been discussed at length in previous lessons, so students should be able to answer them confidently. At the end of the lesson, students peer critique the script of another member of their Readers Theater group against the Readers Theater Criteria anchor chart.

This lesson continues to prepare students to write their argument essay for their End of Unit 2 Assessment. Today, students use their Evidence of Control note-catchers and their understanding of the concept of control as expressed through two of Shakespeare’s characters from A Midsummer Night’s Dream by weighing the evidence and crafting the claim for their argument essay.

Although this is the first official lesson of Unit 3, students began preparing in Unit 2, Lessons 16 and 17. In this lesson, students complete an on-demand mid-unit assessment. The questions posed in the assessment have been discussed at length in previous lessons, so students should be able to answer them confidently.

In this lesson, students are drawn in by a classic story of guilt or innocence as they discover the story of Al, a young man who begins to doubt the innocence of his mentor and father figure. Students are introduced to the elements of a short story and forget that they are learning how to write an argumentative essay in their zeal to defend their opinion with evidence from the text.

This webpage contains theme-based discussion prompts for each vignette in The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, as well as a selection of follow-up activities.

A teachers guide for I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, including discussion questions, deeper subject-based prompts, and ways to related themes to other aspects of education.

This resource includes two poems, eleven text-dependent questions (including one optional constructed-response prompt for students), and explanatory information for teachers regarding alignment to the CCSS.

In this lesson, students read "The Watsons Go To Birmingham" by Christopher Paul Curtis, then submit critical reviews via the internet as a way to publish their personal responses to the novel.

This resource is a series of questions for students to answer after reading I, Robot by Isaac Asimov to provoke discussion of culturual and societal issues and how their effects in the book reflect in daily life.

This lesson will use the "infinite variety" of resources on the Internet to let students find their own image of Othello. The lesson will take them on a WebQuest, first to textual references, and then to on-line searches for images of Othello in film, play productions, and art. Then, students will write an essay about the casting of Othello to conclude the lesson.

The Inquiry Chart (I-Chart) is a strategy that enables students to generate meaningful questions about a topic and organize their writing. Students integrate prior knowledge or thoughts about the topic with additional information found in several sources. The I-Chart procedure is organized into three phases: (1) Planning, (2) Interacting, and (3) Integrating/Evaluating. Each phase consists of activities designed to engage students in evaluating a topic.

This resource is a collection of discussion questions and resoures to supplement Sounder by William H. Armstrong.

In “Invocation” from John Brown’s Body, Stephen Vincent Benet calls on the muse of America to inspire him. He invokes the varied American landscape and the many kinds of people who have contributed to American culture and life. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.