This resource includes an extended lesson designed to help students engage with ideals relative to the “American Dream”. The lesson is largely designed to accompany a reading of the novel The Great Gatsby. Students will read articles that discuss the “American Dream” prior to writing their own argumentative essay.

In this lesson, students explore literature and try to describe the ways humor plays a role. Students consider the rhetorical devices involved in creating humor before searching for them in texts.

Allegories are similar to metaphors: in both the author uses one subject to represent another, seemingly unrelated, subject. However, unlike metaphors, which are generally short and contained within a few lines, an allegory extends its representation over the course of an entire story, novel, or poem. This lesson plan will introduce students to the concept of allegory by using George Orwell’s widely read novella, Animal Farm, which is available on Project Gutenberg.

With enough passion and practice, becoming a slam poet is within your reach. Explore a distant memory on paper, then read it out loud. Edit. Try reading it out loud again, and add your finishing touches. This three-minute video offers five steps to being a slam poet -- while being downright poetic in the process.

Noh, the oldest surviving Japanese dramatic form, combines elements of dance, drama, music, and poetry into a highly stylized, aesthetic retelling of a well-known story from Japanese literature, such as The Tale of Genji or The Tale of the Heike. This lesson provides an introduction to the elements of Noh plays and to the text of two plays, and provides opportunities for students to compare the conventions of the Noh play with other dramatic forms with which they may already be familiar, such as the ancient Greek dramas of Sophocles. By reading classic examples of Noh plays, such as Atsumori, students will learn to identify the structure, characters, style, and stories typical to this form of drama. Students will expand their grasp of these conventions by using them to write the introduction to a Noh play of their own.

In this lesson, students will examine the emergence of the teen idols in the late 1950swith a particular focus on Dion and the Belmontsto understand how mainstream culture promoted the image of the "good citizen" teen during an era of increased anxiety surrounding youth culture. Students will listen to recordings of Dion and the Belmonts' "A Teenager in Love," as well as Dion's later recording "The Wanderer," in addition to viewing a 1958 instructional film outlining school dress codes, a 1953 trailer for The Wild One, a selection of teen magazines, and performances by Jerry Lee Lewis and Connie Francis.

The repercussions of the Great Migration are far-reaching. Today, much of the restlessness and struggle that the Blues helped to articulate in the Migration era remains central in other forms of American music, including Hip Hop. In this lesson, students look to Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf as case studies that illustrate why African Americans left the South in record numbers and how communities came together in new urban environments, often around the sound of the Blues.

This is a follow-up  mini project on tone.This project comes behind lessons on recognizing tone and diction in text.

In this lesson, students will learn to identify and use varied syntax and transitional words and phrases for their argument essays.

In this lesson, students will learn how to identify and use varied syntax and transitional words and phrases. Students will revise their arguments and then work with peers to help review one another's work.

In this lesson, teachers scaffold student reading of websites that highlight science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers. Before choosing a text for close reading, the teacher models how to "read" the variety of texts and features of different websites, including images and interactives. Then the teacher models a close reading with students, setting a purpose and asking text-dependent questions to help students find evidence, use inferencing skills, and peer edit.

Students analyze characters by noting the ways in which defining moments shape their personalities in William Golding's Lord of the Flies. Students will chart changes, note the “direction” of their characters, support their conclusions with textual evidence, and present their findings.

In this lesson plan, students practice the important task of determining audience and purpose for their writing. Students work in groups to write for a randomly assigned audience and purpose, adjusting their writing as necessary for the given combination.

In the TED Ed lesson focused on grammar, students will explore the age-old argument between linguistic prescriptivists and descriptivists — who have two very different opinions on the matter. Discussion questions and additional resources are linked in the sidebar.

As a way to support teachers with English Language Arts (ELA) instruction during the pandemic, the NCDPI ELA team created choice boards featuring standards-aligned ELA activities.The intended purpose of these choice boards is to provide a way for students to continue standards-based learning while schools are closed. Each activity can be adapted and modified to be completed with or without the use of digital tools. Many activities can also be repeated with different texts. These standards-based activities are meant to be a low-stress approach to reinforcing and enriching the skills learned during the 2019-2020 school year. The choice boards are to be used flexibly by teachers, parents, and students in order to meet the unique needs of each learner.Exploration activities are provided for a more self-directed or guided approach to independent learning for students. These activities and sites should be used as a way to explore concepts, topics, skills, and social and emotional competencies that interest the learner. 

This tutorial utilizes a pre-test to identify weaknesses in familiarity with, and use of, MLA and APA styles as well as using a formal writing style. After reviewing the mini-lesson on the missed items, you will be presented with additional interactive quizzes for each style type. The arrows at the bottom of each mini-lesson will lead you to these quizzes for extra practice and support.

While teaching Night or another Holocaust text, completing the reading with Wiesel's "Perils of Indifference" is a great way to address humanity, tolerance, and the power of language.

In this lesson, students first review "to be" verbs and their different forms, then revise previously written work to convert "to be" verbs into stronger action verbs.

In this lesson, students review adverbs and their relationships to verbs, then practice eliminating weak combinations of the two in favor of more assertive verbs.

This video continues to examine the simple past tense, starting to look at irregular verbs and how they are modified differently from regular verbs.