In celebration of Earth Day, students research famous environmentalists and write letters to them asking for their opinions on current issues and turn their letters into a poem.

This online textbook provides a generalized understanding of composition and to serve as a supplementary aid to high school English teachers.

This textbook follows California Language Arts Standards for grades 9-12 to provide a generalized understanding of composition and to serve as a supplementary aid to high school English teachers.

This is a PBL meant for grade levels 4-8. In this project, students will explore areas in their school that need “fixing.” It could be anything from an area that needs sprucing up to clubs that could be added to social problems such as bullying. Students will choose one area that they can affect change. The final product will be a persuasive essay to the person/people in charge that could make the change happen.

This project can work for individuals, pairs, or small groups. In younger grades, the class can choose one project and work as a whole group. If you choose this route, each student should be given a specific task to ensure engagement of everyone.

This activity is designed for 4-5 class periods. It can be shortened or lengthened as needed.

The standards given are for 6th grade, but the same number standards work for any of the other grade levels. Adjust accordingly.

This lesson will go over the culture of dog sled racing and students will determine if they believe this culture is humane or inhuman by participating in a persuasive essay. 

For this lesson, students write a draft of a persuasive essay to the principal addressing the issue of whether or not their school should adopt a uniform policy.

This unit follows a general introduction of Athens and Sparta including historical context, geographical location, demographics, etc. This unit will begin with teaching about the people of Athens and Sparta and the competition between the two. Students will learn about the Persian Wars and the Peloponnesian Wars, focusing on the involvement of Athens and Sparta. Students will read articles describing the two city-states and the spartan education system in an open textbook. Based on their knowledge of both Sparta's and Athens' societal and military ventures, students will decide if the spartan education system was beneficial. They will then compose a persuasive essay on this topic.