Ah, the art of persuasion. Aesop claimed that persuasion is often more effectual than force. Guide your writers through the writing process of creating strong, effective persuasive essays and speeches using the lesson plans, videos,...

Are student-athletes under too much pressure to perform? How should countries respond to acts of domestic terrorism? Should video games be regulated? Never again will you need to worry about coming up with engaging prompts or lessons for...

Narrative writing prompts challenge young writers to create stories. Along the way, they learn how to stretch their imagination, draw on personal experiences, organize the elements of a story, and add sensory details. The 11 prompts are...

Six resources make up an English language arts module that focuses on writing a position paper on food chains. Scholars compose an essay that states a claim, provides evidence, shares their reasoning, then offers a counterclaim and a...

Four videos make up the "Use Information Correctly" series designed for 21st-century learners. The collection focuses on how to avoid plagiarism by citing sources, understanding copyright laws, learning how to copyright their original...

Two texts anchor a 14-lesson unit that explores what it means to be a woman in America. In her "An Address by Elizabeth Cady Stanton" Stanton argues for women's right to vote. Audre Lorde offers a different point of view in her poem, "...

The 20 lessons in Module 1, Unit 2 continue the study of Thanhha Lai's Inside Out & Back Again. Scholars build their skills as they analyze informational texts that look at the experiences of other refugees and the challenges they...

The third and final unit in Module 1 asks students to craft two research-based, free verse, narrative poems that capture the experiences of refugees from a specific culture. Poets draw inspiration from their reading of Thanhha Lai's...

Unit 2 of Module 1a continues a study of To Kill A Mockingbird with readers paying particular attention to the theme of taking a stand. A Mid-Unit Assessment asks students to compare a key scene in the novel with the same scene in the...

To end their study of To Kill A Mockingbird, class members craft a Readers Theatre script incorporating key scenes from the novel that develop the theme of taking a stand. Group's Readers Theatre performances represent the final...

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...

Who bears the most responsibility for ensuring that goods are ethically produced? Using evidence from Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos' Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom, and Science as a central text,...

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...

Words matter. In a 20-lesson unit, writers use words to stir emotions and bring out feelings. Sophomores examine the words and the rhetorical devices Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. uses to develop his purpose and claim in his powerful...

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...

Using Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks as an anchor text, writers use the information they researched in the last unit to craft an argument essay in which they make a claim as to whether or not they believe it is...