This activity engages students in an analysis of the 2008 speech by Barack Obama on race. Students will then create an annotated version of the speech that has them analyze and comment upon Obama's use of history, rhetoric, and language in his message. Students can also create a hypertext of this assignment in order to publish works in different media.

The graphic novel Persepolis is set in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. Most students are unaware of the changes associated with the events during that time, but the repercussions of the revolution are still being felt throughout the world. In this lesson, students work in small groups to research a specific topic related to Iran, using a WebQuest to focus their research on relevant and reliable information. After the research is complete, students present their information to the class through a technology-enhanced presentation.

In this fourth unit of eight total, Think Alouds (pages 27-33 of the pdf), students will apply skills to investigate and understand text.

In this lesson, students complete a project as a group, creating videotaped news segments that give them a glimpse into the social, political, literary, and musical climate of the Roaring Twenties. Students create scripts before recording and editing their projects together using iMovie or a similar film editing software.

A teacher's guide to Thomas C. Foster's How to Read Literature Like a Professor. Includes common core aligned pre-reading promts, discussion questions, post-reading promts and writing activities.

This lesson alerts students to the fallacies that surround them every day. In this lesson, students deconstruct fallacious images and messages in advertisements and demonstrate their understanding of the fallacies through multimedia presentations.

In this lesson, students learn more about the work of the United Nations by researching an issue they care about. The second objective is for students to understand the importance of their voice in the world and how to use social media responsibly in order to share their knowledge with the wider community.

This lesson in poetic sound offers students the opportunity to "experiment" with the sounds of sonnets. Students read sonnets from a variety of authors, compleing a series of tasks that make them focus on different audible aspects of the poetry.

Students conduct research and create a presentation in which they become an organism or species that resides in the tropical montane cloud forest of Monteverde, Costa Rica. Living history projects are non-written, alternative assessments in which studnets embody a particular object, organism, or person other than themselves.

Students will construct a topographical map of the United States, including the outer continental shelf and exclusive economic zone, that shows the major land and underwater formations. Students are then divided into groups to research and prepare short presentations on the various resources, where they are located, how they were formed, how they can be recovered, their uses and economic benefits, and the environmental impacts associated with their recovery.

Students read a case study and debate the pros and cons of a Marine Protected Area (MPA) in the region. Then they select a MPA and develop and present a management plan for it.

During this extended unit, students will explore environmental sustainability from a number of different perspectives. They will dive deep into global policies regarding the environment, specifically the dedication of different countries to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Students will review and discuss specific case studies, offering their opinion of certain practices and policies. As a summative assessment, students will create a “Call to Action” project, with the intent of raising awareness and instigating action on environmental sustainability. This unit includes language (objectives, vocabulary, and lesson modifications) that will help the teacher meet the needs of ELL students. These strategies may be helpful for other students, as well.

Students will examine Hamlet 4.5 through a variety of lenses: performance, social media, and writing. Students will analyze how social media uses urgency and emotional appeals to develop a story. Students will create short, powerful messages within a 140 character limit. Students will discover how news becomes universal by using targeted key words (hashtags).

In this lesson, students view podcasting as a form of communication. Students will read and discuss podcasting, listen to a podcast, and work collaboratively to produce their own podcast.

In this lesson, students prepare and present their own autobiographies with the assistance of a computer presentation they have created.

This lesson encourages students to reflect on personal tragedy by examining how others reacted to the terrorist attacks on 9/11. Students examine some poems written after the attacks before composing their own post-tragedy poems.

In this project-based learning activity, students complete a webquest activity introducing them to The Crucible and the Salem Witch Trials. Students complete a poster presentation on the Salem Witch Trials, comparing it to the Communist Scare of the 1950s.

In this lesson, students complete multiple readings of Jonathan Swift’s 1729 essay "A Modest Proposal": guided reading with the teacher, a collaborative reading with a peer, and an independent reading. After independent reading, pairs of students develop a mock television newscast or editorial script, like those found on Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update,” The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, or The Colbert Report, including appropriate visual images in PowerPoint.

Students will examine their preconceptions about Shakespeare and his work. Then, after reading one theater critic's case for reading and seeing Shakespeare, they will use the Times to explore adaptations of a Shakespearean play they are currently studying. Finally, they will use these as a springboard for staging their own scenes from the play in a new way, using an adaptation they have read about as a model.