The Researching to Deepen Understanding units lay out an inquiry process through which students learn how to deepen their understanding of topics. Students pose and refine inquiry questions, exploring areas they wish to investigate. They find and assess sources and organize researched material in ways that will support their analysis and integration of information.

Students sometimes have difficulty recalling important events in their early lives to write about. This lesson works to resolve this challenge by having students brainstorm as a whole class, in order to benefit from collective recall as they define pivotal moments in their lives. Once items have been remembered, students focus on details of these events by choosing graphic symbols for these moments, people, and places, narrowing their lists to eight to ten items, and then ranking and graphing the items so that the overall connections and patterns are revealed. The graphic life map not only gives students specific events to write about but also includes a graphic for each memory that will help bring the events to life.

This activity emphasizes the importance of teaching reading and writing strategies for students to use with informational text.

In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

In this lesson, students interview and introduce each other to the class as an opening activity.

The highwayman is an eighteenth century thief, who promises to return to his love Bess, the landlord’s daughter. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story 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.

Through multiple lessons, students will explore career choices, set educational goals, and create a media project in which they share information about their chosen career.

Students can improve their comprehension of content area textbooks by summarizing chapters in the form of magazine covers. This lesson begins by asking students to examine a magazine and discuss the ways in which the magazine cover's headlines and graphics express the main ideas of its articles. They then review a chapter in a content area textbook and use an interactive tool to create a magazine cover that summarizes the textbook information. This process enables students to form connections and create visual representations to share information. Although the focus is on informational texts, this assignment could potentially be expanded to include other types of text as well.

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.

Jigsaw is a strategy that emphasizes cooperative learning by providing students an opportunity to actively help each other build comprehension. Use this technique to assign students to reading groups composed of varying skill levels. Each group member is responsible for becoming an "expert" on one section of the assigned material and then "teaching" it to the other members of the team.

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.

In this lesson on the Argo movie official trailer and review article, students will learn about 1979 Iran Hostage Crisis by reading and listening to the text, watching the trailer and working in speaking, listening, reading and writing activities. This resource supports English language development for English language learners.

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 participate in learning clubs, a grouping system used to organize active learning events based on student-selected areas of interest. Guided by the teacher, students select content area topics and draw on multiple texts—including websites, printed material, video, and music—to investigate their topics. Students then have the opportunity to share their learning using similar media, such as learning blogs.

In this lesson, students will turn in their final performance task and celebrate and reflect on their work.

In this lesson, students are introduced to and discuss the question about which they will be writing their essay: Should Lyddie sign the petition? They gather and analyze evidence using the Odell Forming Evidence-Based Claims materials.

In this lesson, students reread selected passages carefully to gather and analyze textual evidence about why Lyddie should or should not sign the petition.

In this lesson, students will synthesize the evidence they have gathered and begin forming their argument of whether Lyddie should or should not sign the petition.

In this lesson, students will participate in a culminating discussion of Pygmalion, utilizing the World Cafe protocol.