California Department of Education
On Tenterhooks: Analyzing the Etiology of Adolescent Anxiety
Are the joys of childhood really that joyful? Readers take a look at adolescent and young adult anxiety. Activities include close reading of articles and a self-reflection of scholars' own fears and anxiety. Learners then create a deck...
ReadWriteThink
Designing Museum Exhibits for The Grapes of Wrath: A Multigenre Project
Challenge readers of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath to create a museum exhibit that uses artifacts to focus on one issue raised by the award winning story of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, and the Joads.
Louisiana Department of Education
Gulliver’s Travels
Gulliver's Travels tells the story of a man who goes on voyages and encounters strange people. A unit plan introduces readers to the classic text, as well as excerpts from other examples of sarcasm and satire, such as "A Modest Proposal"...
Fabius-Pompey School District
Paired Passage Practice and the Extended Response Question
How do pupils relate paired passages to each other? Here's a resource that helps! The lesson includes a short story and a poem as a set of paired reading passages, followed by some analysis questions. It also includes an essay template...
ReadWriteThink
Analyzing Famous Speeches as Arguments
A speaker, a message, an audience. After analyzing these elements in Queen Elizabeth's speech to the troops at Tilbury, groups analyze how other speakers use an awareness of events, and their audience to craft their arguments....
Star Wars in the Classroom
"Shakespeare and Star Wars": Lesson Plan Day 15
To conclude the study of the play, William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope, class members craft an in-class essay comparing Doescher's adaptation to George Lucas's film, Star Wars: A New Hope.
Turabian Teacher Collaborative
My Favorite Martian: Workshopping Warrants
Sometimes explaining an argument can lead to confusion and miscommunication. Narrow down the details in written arguments with a group activity in which learners pretend to be aliens from another planet, struggling to understand each...
Turabian Teacher Collaborative
Parts of Argument III: The Claim Game
Throw down with a fun language arts game! Armed with a hand of writing-themed cards, learners craft arguments based on the strategies written on the cards, dropping cards as they discuss their claims further until there are no strategies...
EngageNY
Grade 11 ELA Module 3: Researching Multiple Perspectives to Develop a Position
The only way that a heinous act of genocide can succeed is if citizens of surrounding groups and countries turn their backs on those suffering. A thorough language arts module addresses shared central ideas with three separate units,...
Maryland Department of Education
The Concept of Identity Lesson 5: Motivation - Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs provides the lens class members use to analyze and evaluate the motivations of the characters in Sylvia Plath's "Initiation" and scenes from Mean Girls. Readers then select a character from A Separate...
EngageNY
Grade 11 ELA Module 4 Overview
The intricate craft of narrative writing can make a happy story feel exuberant or a sad story feel devastating. With 42 extensive lessons that include poignant discussion questions, standards-aligned self-reflections, engaging writing...
EngageNY
Grade 12 ELA Module 1, Unit 2, Lesson 6
The final activity in this narrative writing unit asks class members to craft a multi-paragraph essay reflecting on the structural elements Leslie Marmon Silko employs in her "Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit."
EngageNY
Grade 12 ELA Module 1: Unit 1, Lesson 27
Using their notes developed throughout the unit, class members prepare for the end of the unit assessment by writing a formal essay in which they "analyze how the author of The Autobiography of Malcolm X provides a conclusion that...
Curated OER
Vocabulary Comic Strips
Who says comic strips aren’t educational? Prove these naysayers wrong by asking your class members to create a comic strip for a selected vocabulary word. Using online technological tools that provide access to an array of options for...
Curated OER
Social Studies: Essay Outline
Here is a resource intended for a social studies class, but great no matter the subject. It's a complete outline for an essay. It includes space to write ideas related to the thesis, supporting details, transition sentences and words,...
American Library Association
Creating 21st Century Superheroes
Create 21st century learners by utilizing technology and library databases. Scholars explore the concept of comic books as literature and create a superhero who could uniquely solve a 21st century global issue. Databases such as SIRS are...
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Holt, Rinehart and Winston: Writer's Model: Cause and Effect Essay Example 2
This nine-page essay provides a written example of a cause and effect essay. Clicking on the "Writer's Guide" link in the upper right-hand corner of the page enables the user to get tips, directions, and explanations on the essay.
![De Paul University: Center for Urban Education: Comprehensive Questions: Nonfiction [Pdf] Unknown Type](https://d15y2dacu3jp90.cloudfront.net/images/attachment_defaults/resource/large/FPO-knovation.png "De Paul University: Center for Urban Education: Comprehensive Questions: Nonfiction [Pdf] Unknown Type")
Polk Brothers Foundation Center for Urban Education at DePaul University
De Paul University: Center for Urban Education: Comprehensive Questions: Nonfiction [Pdf]
Questions are provided to help students determine the main idea, topic, and fact versus opinion of a nonfiction piece. Students are prompted to write a summary of an informational text.
University of California
University of California: Sections of the Research Paper
This site presents and defines the general parts of a research paper: title, abstract, introduction, material and methods, results, discussion, acknowledgments, and literature cited. Several helpful questions are presented to the reader...
ReadWriteThink
Read Write Think: The Feature Story?fifteen Minutes (And 500 Words) of Fame!
Contains plans for five lessons that teach students how to write feature news stories and the difference between feature and hard news articles. Students interview each other as prewriting for writing their own human interest stories. In...
SUNY Empire State College
Empire State College: Thesis and Shaping Information
This tutorial on writing essays contains several sections pertaining to the thesis. These include thesis definition, characteristics, analysis of thesis to gather and shape information, and topic sentences. Many examples given. W.9-10.2...
Georgia Department of Education
Ga Virtual Learning: Popular Culture: Expository Writing
This lesson focuses on expository writing including definitions, terms, sample expository essays, sequencing events into chonological order, and links to information about how to write expository essays.
Sophia Learning
Sophia: Paper Writing: Research Paper: Topic Choice
This tutorial focuses on choosing a topic and narrowing or expanding the focus to fit the requirements for a research paper. It provides tips like clustering, using a Venn Diagram, Google Scholar, etc. to find and narrow the topic. It...
Sophia Learning
Sophia: Revision Technique: Thesis and Support
This slideshow lesson focuses on assessing and revising the thesis, topic sentences, and supporting details in a paper. It uses the analogy of the body: the thesis and topic sentences are the bones and the supporting details are the...