Curated OER
Note-Taking: K.I.S.S. "Keep It Short and Simple"
Note-taking is an essential study skill, and it needs to be taught! In the context of a research project on energy sources, learners find multiple sources, evaluating, paraphrasing, and citing them correctly. Two lists with note-taking...
Curated OER
MLA Electronic Source Citation
After your class is relatively familiar with plagiarism and different citation formats, introduce them to MLA with this presentation. Actual documents are used to practice citing sources, so it's a great opportunity to get your class...
Curated OER
Persuasion as Text: Organizational, Grammatical, and Lexical Moves in Barbara Jordan’s "All Together Now"
A thorough lesson plan on persuasive writing takes middle schoolers through several activities, including group discussion, collaborative posters, and independent writing. They compare historical speeches and analyze the persuasive...
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 14: Dedication
Connect Martin Luther King Jr's famous speech, "I Have a Dream," to The Cay by Theodore Taylor. Taylor refers to the speech in his dedication, which creates a natural segue into talking about the speech and how it relates to the novel....
College Board
Reading—Central Idea and Evidence
Young readers become experts at finding the central idea in informational text with an educational resource. The resource includes helpful tips to annotating close passages to succeed on the actual SAT exam, as well as strategies to make...
Preswick House
Teaching Unit: Invisible Man
Invisible Man is a core text in high school literature classes and one of the most cited works on the AP Literature and Composition exam. Instructors new to using Ralph Ellison's novel and those who have long included it as part of their...
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 15: Theme
Build understanding of theme with an activity designed for The Cay and the Common Core. Small groups or pairs use graphic organizers to determine themes, find and record related details from the text, and formulate theme statements. In...
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 6 Close Reading
Look back at the third chapter of The Cay with your class. Pupils will conduct a close reading, taking a second look at a chunk of text and responding to a series of text-dependent questions. Wrap up with an analytical writing prompt...
Polk Bros Foundation
Common Core Constructed Response Organizer
Get your writers ready to compose a constructed response essay in response to either an informational or fictional text. Pupils note down the big idea they wish to address as well as up to nine examples from the text that they wish to...
BW Walch
Vending Machine Bans Increase in Schools Nationwide
Does a ban on vending machines infringe on student rights, or do school officials have an obligation to monitor foods sold on school grounds? Your class members will explore the educational, health, and financial issues related to...
Prestwick House
Writing Arguments in Response to Nonfiction
Emotional appeal or argument? That is the question. An informative instructional activity helps your class recognize the difference between a logical argument and an emotional appeal and learn how to craft an argumentative response....
The Alamo
Lorenzo de Zavala and José Antonio Navarro: Their Contributions to the Independence of Texas
Lorenzo de Zavala and José Antonio Navarro were both native Mexicans and leaders of the Texas Revolution, but with different backgrounds and careers. Compare and contrast the two influential men with a research assignment in which...
NPR
Is There Really an Immigration Line?
If you've ever looked at the US immigration system, you know that it is complex and a source of controversy. An insightful lesson plan encourages learners to conduct their own analyses of the US immigration system by asking them to...
Stanford University
Declaration of Independence
Scholars work in pairs to decide whether leaders wrote the Declaration of Independence for the rich and powerful or for every man. To draw their conclusion, pairs read excerpts from two historians and complete a graphic organizer citing...
Curated OER
Those Baffling Bibliographies!
Are you working on a research and citation unit? Have your young writers listen to a lecture on how to cite research sources correctly and how to distinguish new information that requires citing. They compile a list of works cited from...
Curated OER
Conducting Research
"Conducting Research" is a short presentation that walks secondary students through steps for researching. Plagiarism, style, citing, and creating bibliographies are overviewed. While this is a short slide show, it would be useful to add...
Curated OER
The Purpose and Power of Persuasion
Examine the power of persuasion and have learners consider how it influences events in their own lives. After reading and analyzing informational texts to understand the author's purpose, class members take a written test and craft a...
Scholastic
Prescription Pain Medication: What You Need to Know
The national epidemic of opioid addiction is making its way into high school populations. Educate the students in your class about the ways prescription opioids can both block pain and deliver large amounts of dopamine that make it very...
Curated OER
Role-Playing and Discovery: Literary Analysis
Introduce your class to the personal essay with this activity. Learners identify the subject of an essay and then record examples from the essay that represent the author's thoughts and feelings regarding the subject. While this resource...
EngageNY
Close Reading: Louie’s Change of Heart
Scholars read additional pages in Unbroken to discover more about Louie's character. Readers use turn-and-talk strategies to discuss character traits that describe Louie. They then answer text-dependent questions and cite evidence to...
K12 Reader
Extreme Weather
What is thunder? After reading a short article about extreme weather, middle schoolers must use information in the text to explain this weather phenomenon.
EngageNY
Grade 9 ELA Module 3, Unit 3, Lesson 3
Plagiarism is the theft of intellectual property. To avoid this crime, class members learn how to create a works cited page and how to craft in-text citations. After examining a high-performance model paragraph and an example of a works...
K12 Reader
Traveling to the Distant West
If you build it they can come. After reading a short article about the impact of western expansion, middle schoolers cite evidence from the article to explain how this expansion forced changes in transportation.
K12 Reader
Setting the Scene: Great Expectations
Expect great things from this reading comprehension exercise that asks readers to cite evidence from the provided passages of Great Expectations to support the inference that Charles Dickens' Miss Havisham, and her room, are indeed strange.