Get the Joke!
(View Complete Item Description)This lesson capitalizes on a student's love of jokes to understand how word context and inference are used in everyday language to create humor.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
All resources in ELA Review and Alignment
Dreams, Stars, and Beaches
(View Complete Item Description)Students will read the story, Tar Beach by Faith Ringgold and compare thier own lives with that of a girl in a tenement builidng in New York City. Through reading the story, students will better understand the hopes and dreams of the less fortunate. Student will predict ideas or events that may take place in the text, give rationale for predictions, confirm and discuss predictions as the story progresses.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
Mary McLeod Bethune
(View Complete Item Description)In this lesson, students will use the individual experience of Mary McLeod Bethune to analyze choice, its affects on social equality, and impact on their own life experiences.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
Peer Review: Narrative
(View Complete Item Description)The PQP technique—Praise–Question–Polish—requires group members to take a turn reading their drafts aloud as the other students follow along with copies. This oral reading helps the writer to hear the piece in another voice and to identify possible changes independently.
Material Type: Assessment
Learning Clubs: Motivating Middle School Readers and Writers
(View Complete Item Description)In this lesson, students participate in learning clubs, a grouping system used to organize active learning events based on student-selected areas of interest. Guided by the teacher, students select content area topics and draw on multiple texts—including websites, printed material, video, and music—to investigate their topics. Students then have the opportunity to share their learning using similar media, such as learning blogs.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
Ancient Greek and Roman Mythology Puppet Show
(View Complete Item Description)In this lesson, students recognize the cultural contributions of ancient Greek and Roman mythology and drama. They will read and analyze a myth and then create a puppet skit to demonstrate the myth.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
Amigo Brothers: Anthology
(View Complete Item Description)Seventeen-year-old best friends dream of becoming light-weight boxing champions of the world. They train together until they find out that they will meet in the ring to determine who will fight in a championship tournament. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
Betsey Brown Teachers Guide
(View Complete Item Description)A teachers guide for Betsey Brown by Ntozake Shange, including chapter-specific questions for increased comprehension, questions for class discussion, and suggestions for further study.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
Knots in My Yo-Yo String: Anthology
(View Complete Item Description)This autobiographical piece tells what a neat, tidy rule-follower this author was in his youth—except for his yo-yo. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
The Effective Use of Figurative Language: Imagery
(View Complete Item Description)In this lesson students will identify the effective use of imagery and practice analyzing and creating imagery in particular selections.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
Curriculum Guide to the Historical Fiction Works of Laurie Halse Anderson
(View Complete Item Description)This curriculum guide covers six works of Laurie Halse Anderson (Chains, Forge, Ashes, Fever 1793, Independent Dames: What You Never Knew About the Women and Girls of the American Revolution, and Thank You, Sarah: The Woman Who Saved Thanksgiving), and contains discussion prompts, key vocabulary terms, and ideas for assignments and activities related to each book.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
Dance Moms Reality or Fatality
(View Complete Item Description)Students will view a reality television episode and read a news article related to reality television. Then students will complete a graphic organizer to create an argument for or against children participating in reality television. Students will apply supportive details for writing a persuasive paragraph.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
The House on Mango Street Discussion Guide
(View Complete Item Description)This webpage contains theme-based discussion prompts for each vignette in The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, as well as a selection of follow-up activities.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce, and the Unreliable Narrator
(View Complete Item Description)A guideline for teachers to compare the works of Edgar Allan Poe and Ambrose Bierce and discuss how their narration choices affect the piece and the reader.
Material Type: Unit of Study
Why the Waves Have Whitecaps: Anthology
(View Complete Item Description)The wind and water are personified as two women talking about their children. Mrs. Wind brags about her children, which annoys Mrs. Water who drowns Mrs. Wind’s children when they come to her for a drink. As Mrs. Wind calls for her children, white feathers come to the top of the water, causing whitecaps. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
Dulce et Decorum est by Wilfred Owen
(View Complete Item Description)In this lesson, the students will get practice in reading and writing habits that they have been working with throughout the curriculum, in this case using poetry.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
Imagine That! Playing with Genre through Newspapers and Short Stories
(View Complete Item Description)This lesson uses narrative structures to introduce students to one form of expository writing—news briefs and articles. By condensing a short story into a newspaper article and expanding an article into a short story, students will explore the ways that exposition differs from narration.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
An Educator's Guide to Al Capone Does My Shirts
(View Complete Item Description)From Penguin Press— an Educator's Guide to Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Holdenko— is a series of Common Core aligned reading questions, lessons, and activities for her fiction novel.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
Last Summer with Maizon: Basal Text
(View Complete Item Description)In this story, the main character, Margaret is affected by the loss of her father and then the loss of her best friend who moves away. As she adapts to that change she discovers new talents and new friends. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments;
Material Type: Lesson Plan
Developing a Definition of Reading through Investigation in Middle School
(View Complete Item Description)In this introductory lesson, students engage in a hands-on, collaborative investigation of the definition of reading by participating in small group brainstorming sessions and an analysis of a variety of texts and the strategies they need to read them. Students also create individual Reader’s Profiles with an online tool modeled on social networking sites. Sharing these profiles and reflecting on their own learning, students ultimately develop a working definition of reading which they refine during the year.
Material Type: Lesson Plan