Curated OER
And We Were All in One Place: Youth Culture and the Rock Festival
High schoolers explore historical youth culture events. In this youth culture lesson plan, students discover details regarding the Altamont, Woodstock, and Monterey concerts. High schoolers conduct research that regarding the rock...
Curated OER
Disease Lesson Plan
Students research the bubonic plague including disease facts, the time frame of outbreaks and the impact it had on society. They examine the work of Edgar Allen Poe and write an essay explaining why the plague was a subject of interest...
Massachusetts Department of Education
Nostalgia
To prepare for crafting their own memoir, class members examine poetry by Margaret Atwood, Billy Collins, Robert Hayden, and Claude McKay, stories by Richard Rodriquez and Willa Cather, and Barry Levinson's film Avalon. They examine how...
Curated OER
Amos and Boris: Text Study
Twenty insightful questions follow a read aloud of the story, Amos and Boris by William Steig. Scholars then show what they know through completion of a cause and effect chart, reading fluency assessment, and a written explanatory or...
Curated OER
Dusty Locks and the Three Bears
Read this twist on Goldilocks and the Three Bears: Dusty Locks and the Three Bears by Susan Lowell. Kindergartners listen, predict, and discuss the story. They then participate in a dramatization of the story and draw a picture to...
Utah Education Network (UEN)
8th Grade Poetry: A to Z Poem
A two-part lesson asks eighth graders first to draw connections between the myth of Aengus and William Butler Yeats' poem "The Song of Wandering Aengus." In the second part of the lesson, writers craft an "A to Z Poem."
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway
Accompany a reading of Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea with a thorough literature packet. Although the materials are meant to prepare readers for a timed essay, the background information and the activities are sure to engage...
EngageNY
TASC Transition Curriculum: Workshop 6
Is a college education necessary for success in today's world? The class investigates the question, along with others at the end of the sixth workshop in a 15-part series. The lesson has four parts with multiple activities and...
Curated OER
Phineas Gage: Personal Phrenology Chart During Reading Activity
Phrenology, the belief that parts of your brain control certain aspects of your personality, is described in Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science. While we now know much more about the brain, learners use this idea...
New York State Education Department
TASC Transition Curriculum: Workshop 5
Are video games sports? Pupils investigate this question as well as various nonfiction selections to learn more about claims and the support that defines them. All of the selections mimic the rigor on state tests and encourage close...
Utah Education Network (UEN)
7th Grade Poetry: Ode Poem
Walt Whitman's "Captain, My Captain" and Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" provide seventh graders with examples of odes. After reading and discussing these and other examples, young poets craft an ode and respond to the ode of a...
Cornell University
Mechanical Properties of Gummy Worms
Learners won't have to squirm when asked the facts after completing an intriguing lab investigation! Hook young scholars on science by challenging them to verify Hooke's Law using a gummy worm. Measuring the length of the worm as they...
EngageNY
Final Performance Task: Fishbowl Discussion about Editorial Essay
Using the resource, learners share their essay revisions with a partner. Afterward, they participate in a Fishbowl discussion, receiving peer feedback about their editorial essays.
Curated OER
Thoreau, Emerson, and Transcendentalism
Tackle Transcendentalist literature with these questions. This resource provides 14 essay questions that cover different works by Thoreau and Emerson. Class members may also access an online quiz on the selection using the link at the...
Teaching Tolerance
Consuming and Creating Political Art
A picture is worth a thousand words, but political art may be worth even more! After examining examples of political cartoons, murals, and other forms of public art, class members create their own pieces to reflect their ideals and...
Curated OER
Walk Two Moons: Hook and Concept of a Frame Story
As an introduction to Sharon Creexh's Walk Two Moons, a volunteer dons a pair of boots and walks about the classroom.Observers then ponder the axiom, Don't judge a man until you've walked two moons in his moccasins. Their collaborative...
Thoughtful Education Press
Personal Narratives: Learning from Lessons Life Teaches Us
"First Appearance," Mark Twain's tale about overcoming stage fright, serves as a model of a personal narrative and gets young writers thinking about milestones in their own lives. After examining student models and considering the...
Utah Education Network (UEN)
8th Grade Poetry: Assess
Eighth graders craft a Petrarchan sonnet and respond to a performance assessment to demonstrate what they have learned in this five-lesson poetry unit.
National Endowment for the Humanities
Faulkner's As I Lay Dying: Burying Addie's Voice
Students explore the use of voice and title in William Faulkner's, "As I Lay Dying". They identify and discuss the use of image, symbols and narrative voice in the story.
National Endowment for the Humanities
Walt Whitman to Langston Hughes: Poems for a Democracy
Explore the idea of democratic poetry. Upper graders read Walt Whitman, examining daguerreotypes, and compare Whitman to Langston Hughes. They describe aspects of Whitman's I Hear America Singing to Langston Hughes' Let America Be...
Anti-Defamation League
Shirley Chisholm: Unbought, Unbossed and Unforgotten
A 13-page packet introduces high schoolers to a lady of amazing firsts. Shirley Chisholm was the first Black woman elected to Congress, the first Black woman to run for President of the United States, and a leader of the Women's Rights...
Curated OER
A Garden of Verses: Poems About Class Gardens
Students explore botany by participating in a language arts activity. In this garden poetry lesson, students read the classic poem "Mary, Mary Quite Contrary" and discuss the imagery and rhyming methods used. Students examine their own...
Teacher’s Pet Publications
A Common Core Approach to Teaching Of Mice and Men
Whether or not your school/state has adopted the Common Core standards, you will want to add this resource to your Of Mice and Men curriculum materials. The chapter-by-chapter activities ask readers to provide evidence from the novella...
Southern Nevada Regional Professional Development Program
Reading Literature - An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” Ambrose Bierce’s short story, is used to model how structural moves, the decisions an author makes about setting, point of view, time order, etc., can be examined to reveal an author’s purpose. Groups...