Students participate in a fishbowl discussion about various legal situations related to the "age of responsibility" and contribute their ideas and arguments on the matter to a Learning Network Student Opinion blog post. This resource from the New York Times discusses what standard(s) society should use to determine when a youth should be treated as an adult.

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.

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 learn to evaluate political cartoons for their meaning, message, and persuasiveness. Students first develop critical questions about political cartoons. Then they access an online activity to learn about artistic techniques cartoonists frequently use. Finally, students will work in small groups to analyze a political cartoon.

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.

In this lesson on St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, students will learn annotation skills and work in small groups to explore how the author develops the pack as a character in itself.

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.

A teaching resource for actiities, research assignments, writing prompts and cooperative activities for Ben Franklin including Poor Richard's Almanac.

Gifted students answer bibliotherapy questions, use a note-catcher and complete a project based on their answers.

In this lesson, students select American authors to research, create timelines and biopoems, and then collaborate on teams to design and perform a panel presentation in which they role-play as their authors. The final project requires each student to synthesize information about his or her author in an essay.

This lesson is designed to help students prepare to read a historical novel. Students are required to complete research pertaining to the work's setting, time-period or decade. Afterwards, students use the online site and software, Prezi, to communicate and share their findings.

This extended lesson offers students a unique way to explore new books and think about the education process. They first participate in a "blind date" with a book - a quick reading of one small part of a novel - after which they are asked to rate it. Eventually, students choose a book to read and go on to debate whether their book should be added to the curriculum.

After reading a play, students create a resume for one of the characters. Students first discuss what they know about resumes, then select a character from the play to focus on. Next, they search online for historical background information. Using supporting details from the play, students then draft resumes for their characters and search a job listing site for which their character is qualitfied.

By mimicking popular websites that relate the plot of movies, television shows, and real life events in reverse, students have the opportunity to review the plot in a more creative and challenging fashion. Using a snowclone (a verbal formula that is changed for reuse), students complete the phrase "If you read ____ backwards, it's about ____" to comment on the plots of novels.

Teachers generally warn student writers to avoid sentence fragments but professional writers use sentence fragments effectively for a variety of reasons. Using Edgar Schuster's study of sentence fragments from "The Best American Essays," this lesson encourages students to examine fragments in action, determine their effective rhetorical uses, and reflect on their own uses of sentence fragments.

This brochure assignment teaches how shifting purposes and audiences can create change in a student’s writing. After exploring published brochures, students determine key questions, research a topic and work through the writing process to create their own informative brochure complete with visuals.

In "Paradox and Dream," a 1966 essay on the American Dream, John Steinbeck writes, "For Americans too the wide and general dream has a name. It is called "the American Way of Life.' No one can define it or point to any one person or group who lives it, but it is very real nevertheless." Yet a recent cover of Time Magazine reads "The History of the American Dream " Is It Real?" Here, students explore the meaning of the American Dream by conducting interviews, sharing and assessing data, and writing papers based on their research to draw their own conclusions.

Students are prompted to challenge their notion of synonyms being words that "mean the same" by investigating key words in Robert Frost's poem, "Choose Something Like a Star." First, they build an understanding of connotation and register by categorizing synonyms for the title word, "choose." Then they develop lists of synonyms for words of their choice elsewhere in the poem and collaborate on a full analysis, focusing on the relationship between word choice and the elements of speaker, subject, and tone.

When it comes to formal writing, most students choose passive voice constructions because to them, the verbs sound more academic or more formal. This minilesson explores verb choice in a variety of online resources then encourages students to draw conclusions about verb use. Then they explore the pieces they are writing, checking for active and passive voice, and make necessary revisions.