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.

A 4 minute video on removing vague, ambigous words like 'good' and 'bad' from student writing.

In this activity, students will divide into two teams to conduct a mock trial based on The Ransom of Redchief by O. Henry.

In this lesson, students read a designated chapter of "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn". In small groups, students discuss chapter summary and answer specific questions related to the chapter. Groups will present summaries, addressing answers to specific questions, thereby chunking information.

In this activity, students research a decade in their school’s history. Within each group, students take on specific roles such as archivist, manager, techie, or researcher. Students become active archivists, gathering photos, artifacts, interviews, and stories for a museum exhibit that highlights one decade in their school’s history. The final project can be shared and displayed in your classroom, in the school auditorium or in the library.

In this lesson, students engage in a choral reading of Shakespeare in an effort to better understand his works. By reading rearranged character lines - sometimes out of context - students see new sides to characters in Shakespeare plays they have already read.

Students will first imagine they are executives at major American clothing retailers who are researching and negotiating what policy changes, if any, their company should take in light of the recent disasters in Bangladeshi garment factories. Then, students will write their own persuasive letters to their favorite clothing brand advocating a course of action to improve safety standards for workers around the world.

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.

This lesson asks students to explore the motivation behind characters' actions in To Kill a Mockingbird. Students first engage in a freewrite activity. They then do research and creative thinking to design a poster and plan a presentation representing a psychological profile for a selected character, while determining what specific factors (such as family, career, environment, and so forth) have the greatest influence on the characters' decision making throughout the novel. The groups present their findings to the class by assuming the persona of their character and explaining the psychological factors influencing their behavior in the novel

Students learn about the scope of recent attacks and what is being done to counter such threats. Then they consider the broader practical and ethical consequences of preparing for cyberwar.

In this lesson, students research and discuss real-world chemical issues. Students will either participate in a debate or write and essay in which they compare and contrast several points of view.

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, students will work collaboratively to create a presentation featuring an electrostatics demonstration. The demonstration should deal with some aspect of the three basic principles of electrostatics. Each group will also submit a written descripton of their demonstration.

Students design and conduct research to discover firsthand what type of fish is being sold in their community, where this fish comes from, and whether that fish is an overfished species. This lesson gives students a chance to do their own market research and discover first-hand what type of fish is being sold to the public. It also provides an introduction to fish as an important food source and as an industry controlled partly by supply and demand. The results that emerge from this lesson will likely lead your students to question the role of public education in seafood choices for sustainable fisheries.

By closely reading historical documents and attempting to interpret them, students consider how Arthur Miller interpreted the facts of the Salem witch trials and how he successfully dramatized them in his play, "The Crucible." As they explore historical materials, such as the biographies of key players (the accused and the accusers) and transcripts of the Salem Witch trials themselves, students will be guided by aesthetic and dramatic concerns: In what ways do historical events lend themselves (or not) to dramatization? What makes a particular dramatization of history effective and memorable?

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. 

Prezi video is a great resource for students to use to create original content. The planning and execution of content represents levels 3 and 4 of Webb's Depth of Knowledge (DOK).

Students are introduced to the idea of "The Simpsons" as satire by comparing what they did on a typical day to the things the Simpsons do in the opening sequence of the show. Students use the character profiles on the Simpsons website to analyze six characters, identifying satirical details that reveal the comment/criticism being made about society through the characters. Finally, students use a graphic organizer to record and analyze specific examples of satire as they watch a full episode.

In this lesson, students map their social locations, reflect on their identities and the dramatic purpose of monologue, and craft speeches that explore defining aspects of their lives.