This recurring lesson encourages students to comprehend their reading through inquiry and collaboration. They work independently to choose quotations that exemplify the main idea of the text, come to a consensus about those quotations in collaborative groups, then formulate "quiz" questions about their reading that other groups will answer.

This lesson and resource helps students strengthen their persuasive writing by identifying and responding to counterarguments.

After taking a virtual tour of the Globe Theater in Elizabethan London, students use graphic organizers to compare attending a performance at the Globe to attending a Broadway play or movie. Then they work collaboratively to create a commercial advertisement geared towards an Elizabethan audience.

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.

After gaining skill through anazlying a historic and contemporary speech as a class, students will select a famous speech from a list (included) and write an essay that identifies and explains the rhetorical strategies that the author chose while crafting an effective speech. The analysis will consider questions such as: What makes a good argument? How did the author's rhetoric evoke a response from the audience? Why are the words still famous today?

In this lesson, students will complete at least two Forming Evidence-Based Claims Tools for all inquiry paths on their Research Frame.

Surveys are an important tool when doing research and learning to evaluate information. In this lesson, students consider the purpose and meaning of surveys, learn what types of questions are asked, evaluate the validity of a specific survey, and write in their journals to reflect what they have learned.

Few geo-political events have resonated through the past 70 years like Neville Chamberlain?s decision to pursue the policy of appeasement in reaction to German aggression leading up to the Second World War. Leaders throughout the world have invoked appeasement to justify military action ever since. The decisions that went into Chamberlain?s policy, however, were far from straightforward. Historians have continually debated and reinterpreted these events. In this lesson, students address the issue of appeasement and explore and weigh evidence against and in favor of the policy.

In this lesson, students will continue to gather evidence for their writing argument by rereading and analyzing the article "Kids Still Getting Too Much 'Screen Time': CDC" by Amy Norton.

In this lesson, students will continue to pre-plan their argumentative essay, working on Pros and Cons Charts as they read and analyze the article "Social Media as Community" by Keith Hampton.

In this lesson, students will complete annotation and notes on the article "Education 2.0: Never Memorize Again?" By Sarah Perez. Students will review the task, purpose, and audience for their argument and participate in a prewriting activity.

Students will work with the elements of argument and persuasion to understand the Declaration of Independence and then move into the diction used in the document and the power those words have.

Students analyze the argumentative structure employed by Robert Lake (Medicine Grizzlybear) in his essay "Indian Father's Plea." There are three versions with varying levels of support.

This primary source document is a translation of material provided to East German propagandists in August 1961, just after the Berlin Wall was built. Typical of the GDR"™s approach, it presents the Wall as a glorious triumph of socialism. It was produced by the Election Commission of the National Front of the GDR as material to use to get out the vote for the September 1961 election.

Students will evaulate a nonfiction or realistic text for its cultural relevance to themselves and as a group. Then they analyze the cultural relevance of a selected text using an online tool. After, students search for additional relevant texts; each chooses one and writes a review of the text that they choose.

This lesson asks students to keep a daily diary that records how and when they listen to radio, music, and other streaming media. Students then analyze the details and compare their results to published reports on American radio listeners. They conclude by reflecting on their findings and writing a final statement on their audio literacy practices and interests.

In this lesson plan, students will learn how to critique nonfiction texts, focusing on how to determine bias and how to identify an author's purpose in a text.

Learn about the checks and balances system of the three branches of the U.S. government.

On March 1, 1896, a massive Ethiopian army routed Italian forces at the Battle of Adwa. The battle marked the largest military triumph of an African state over a European army in the 19th century and helped Ethiopia retain its independence during Europe's "scramble for Africa." In this lesson students read three different textbook accounts of the battle - two American and one Ethiopian - to investigate the question: How did Ethiopia defeat Italy at the Battle of Adwa?

The Battle of the Somme was a definitive campaign of the First World War. Unprecedented casualties resulted from intense trench warfare and new military technologies. In this lesson, students analyze and compare three different accounts of the battle?s first day -- one from a British journalist who paints a rosy picture of the Allied offensive and two from combatants that provide starkly different portraits of the event.