Teach your sophomores how to compare the same ideas in two different texts with a unit that uses Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club and H.G. Bissinger's Friday Night Lights as central texts. Class members use their close reading skills to...

Machiavelli's The Prince challenges readers to ponder the role of leadership and to consider the qualities that make a good ruler. After a close reading and discussion of Machiavelli's ideas, the five-lesson unit concludes with class...

Ethan Canin's short story "The Palace Thief" is the anchor text in a unit that teaches 10th grades close reading skills. Class members gather evidence for an expository essay in which they analyze how how the author uses the interactions...

Introduce freshmen to the writing process with a unit that shows them how to craft an informative, expository paper that addresses a research question. They learn how to develop a central claim, an engaging introduction, how to avoid...

Temple Grandin's Animals in Translation provides the anchor text in an inquiry-based unit project that requires ninth graders to use sophisticated research skills. Learners focus on accurate search engine techniques including searching...

Julia Alvarez's autobiographical essay "A Genetics of Justice," describes the impact Rafael Trujillo, the president of the Dominican Republic in the 1930s, had on the her mother. Alvarez's essay is the anchor text in a short unit that...

Research writing is all about the process. Scholars work through the steps of the investigative process in a unit that asks them to create a research portfolio, examine several possible topics, and search for resources on these topics....

Freshman take a stab at analyzing information texts in a unit that focuses on readers' fascination with true-crime stories and murder mysteries. Using Walter Mosely's Newsweek essay, "True Crime: The Roots of an American Obsession" as an...

Analysis of complex texts requires close reading. The six lessons in the first unit of Module 1 teach readers how to annotate text, as well as how to conduct evidence-based discussions, and produce evidence-based writing, the skills they...

The third unit in this module uses Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own" as an anchor text. Learners continue to develop their close reading and analysis skill, this time with a nonfiction text. In addition, they work to improve their...

A continuation of Unit 1, the 25 lessons in this unit require learners to continue to practice the skills they will need in the English Language Arts Classroom: close reading, annotating text, collaborative discussions, and...

Here is a set of three kindergarten writing rubrics designed to meet the Common Core writing standards for opinion, informative, and narrative writing pieces. They each include four levels of performance—beginning, developing,...