In this lesson, students explore the definition of a hero (Amelia Earhart) and use the interactive Venn diagram to identify the most common characteristics of a hero. Information and photographs concerning Amelia Earhart's story are provided in this link.

In this eight day unit, students will delve into the ways that the poetry of William Carlos Williams and Cubist and Precisionist paintings share similarities in approach. The culminating activity involves writing an essay comparing a poem to a painting inspired by that poem.

In this lesson from Read Write Think, students will read Angela Thomas' novel The Hate U Give and then delve into radio interviews that explain the purpose and viewpoints of Black Lives Matter. Topics of study include double consciousness/codeswitching, the Black Panther movement, Tupac Shakur as a an activist, and the complexity of gang culture. Students will explore subject material through excerpts form James Baldwin's essay "Letter from a Region in My MInd" and Ta-Nehisi Coates' "Letter to My Son."

This interactive resource helps students make a diamante poem. Students work with the computer to create a diamante poem using specific words and/or adjectives. Students can print or save their work when finished.

The hero's journey is an ancient story pattern that can be found in texts from thousands of years ago or in newly released Hollywood blockbusters. This interactive tool will provide students with background on the hero's journey and give them a chance to explore several of the journey's key elements. Students can use the tool to record examples from a hero's journey they have read or viewed or to plan out a hero's journey of their own.

This resource provides a strategy explaining the writing process as well as practical methods to help students become proficient writers.

This resource provides a strategy that enables students to create meaningful questions about a topic and organize their writing.

For this activity, students place pieces of information in an order that makes sense and write a paragraph in their own words.

Read-alouds of The Story of Lightning and Thunder (a Nigerian tale) and The Story of the Milky Way: A Cherokee Tale introduce the concept of a pourquoi tale, a folk tale that explains how or why something came to exist. Background information on the Nigerian and Cherokee cultures (assembled by the teacher from the listed websites) sets the stage for discussion of how beliefs and customs might influence the narrative and the moral of a story. The class works together to outline the key elements of pourquoi stories, and students read and analyze an additional story using the Pourquoi Reading Worksheet. Working in cooperative groups, students then use these stories as a framework on which to write their own pourquoi tales. Final production is either a skit or illustrated narration of each group's story. If these books are not available, other folktale books will substitute and the lesson can be adapted.

In this lesson, students examine and discern the writing structure of various alphabet books and improve their writing skills by creating an alphabet book using one of the structures examined.

This resource teaches students how to organize information compiled through research by creating an outline for research topics they are working on.

In this five lesson pack from Read Write Think, students will be comparing the text version of Jane Eyre to the 2007 Masterpiece adaptation of Jane Eyre, focusing on character development and theme.

In this lesson, students learn the Spelling in Parts (SIP) strategy by dividing a polysyllabic word into parts, thinking about spelling patterns of each part, saying each part, and spelling each part. Students also learn to demonstrate the transfer of SIP by explaining how they spell or decode big words when reading or writing.

In this 2 day lesson plan, students will work with Matt de la Pena's novel Ball Don't Lie, re-reading a passage and focusing on how the theme is developed through the character interaction.