Curated OER
Language Arts: Awesome Authors Website
Students examine the writing techniques of professional authors and apply them to their own work. In pairs, they email authors to discover the tricks of the trade. Students create their own Website for their work.
Curated OER
Ordinary People: Unsent Letter
Invite your learners to take on the voice of a character from Ordinary People as they write a letter. Pupils use what they know about the given character to compose their letter, which must relate to the plot of the novel.
Curated OER
Let's Learn About Patricia Polacco: An Author Study
Young scholars participate in an author study about Patricia Polacco focusing on her use of family and friendship as themes in her books. They write a letter to the author and compare her life to that of Beatrix Potter. They examine how...
Curated OER
My Antonia: During Reading Strategy
Home in on the quote on this page to explore setting, the author's and character's voices, and plot in Willa Cather's My Antonia. Pupils draw a picture of what is described in the quote, discuss the content, and make connections to their...
Deer Valley Unified School District
Close Reading: Analyzing Mood and Tone
The AP Literature and Composition exam is all about close reading. Test takers are presented with a passage and asked to analyze how an author uses literary devices to create a desired effect. Prepare your students for the exam with a...
Curated OER
Navajo Weaving: A Lesson in Math and Tradition
Combine geometry and tradition with a lesson that spotlights Navajo weaving. The book, The Goat in the Rug by Charles L. Blood and Martin Link hooks scholars before watching a video of Navajo people tending their sheep and beginning...
Curated OER
Lesson: Lisa Signal: Altering Perspectives
Kids make big artistic gestures, just like the abstract artist, Lisa Signal. They use her work as inspiration for making simplistic, abstract, statements in an artistic way. They analyze her work, then walk through an unfamiliar...
J. Paul Getty Trust
O Greek Shape! O Fair Pose!
Everything old is new again. The Los Angeles J. Paul Getty Museum presents a lesson on how Greek black-figure painting influenced eighteenth century Neoclassical artists. After looking at a series of examples, class members create their...
Curated OER
The New York School: Action and Abstraction
High schoolers examine the influences and similarities between the New York School poets and Abstract Expressionist artists. They analyze paintings and poems, and write original poetry.
Curated OER
Lesson: Elizabeth Peyton: Artist's Community: The Real
What is real or imagined? The lines of beauty reality, and imagination are blurred in Elizabeth Peyton's portraits of her community. Learners analyze her use of artistic technique in conveying real and imagined communities. They then use...
Curated OER
An Electronic Self-Portrait Lesson Plan - A Unit for Middle School
Using a photo of themselves for inspiration, learners create a multi-media self-portrait. A digital image of each child is taken, it is uploaded into the computer where is can be experimented with in a digital format. Young artists then...
EngageNY
Grade 12 ELA Module 1: Unit 1, Lesson 5
Zoot suits, the Lindy hop, and conks. Readers carefully examine the rhetoric of chapter 4 of The Autobiography of Malcolm X, analyze the effectiveness of using slang to develop a narrative, and consider how they might incorporate Haley's...
EngageNY
Grade 9 ELA Module 2: Unit 1, Lesson 6
It may not be 4 o'clock in the morning when you have ended these labors, but it's still time to work on textual analysis. Study the resolution of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" through the thematic lens of guilt and confession,...
Breaking News English
More People to Stick to New Year's Resolutions
What makes a good New Year's resolution? Practice goal-setting and reading comprehension with a set of language arts activities. English learners work on cloze passages, synonym matches, interviewing exercises, and...
University of Colorado
Looking Inside Planets
Researchers use scientific data to understand what is inside each of the planets. The first in a series of six, this lesson builds off of that concept by having pupils use a data table to create their own scale models of the interiors of...
Library of Congress
The Harlem Renaissance
The Harlem Renaissance brought forth many American art forms including jazz, and the writings of Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes. Using a carefully curated set of documents from the Library of Congress, pupils see the cultural...
EngageNY
Launching Researching: Reading for Gist and Gathering Evidence Using the Research Guide
Let's get to the gist! Pupils work in research teams to gather information about specific refugee experiences from Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Kurdistan. Scholars then try to find the gist of informational texts about their topics,...
EngageNY
Studying Conflicting Information: Varying Perspectives on the Pearl Harbor Attack, Part 1
Scholars read President Roosevelt's Day of Infamy speech and analyze the speech's words using close reading guides. Readers determine Roosevelt's point of view after reading the speech and filling in the guides.
EngageNY
End of Unit Assessment: Making Connections between Song Lyrics and Texts
For the end-of-unit assessment, scholars engage in small group Socratic seminars to connect the lyrics of two songs to texts they read and studied. They discuss how the songs "Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around" and "Lift Every Voice...
EngageNY
Adding to Cascading Consequences and Stakeholders: Industrial Food Chain
Young researchers create a class Cascading Consequences chart to see how the industrial food chain affects people, animals, and the environment. They also work in teams to complete a Stakeholders chart for the industrial food chain model...
EngageNY
Adding to Cascading Consequences and Stakeholders: Local Sustainable Food Chain
Equip the class to perfect their presenting skills. To prepare for an upcoming oral presentation, scholars create and analyze an anchor chart for effective speaking skills. Pupils also use their research to add to their Cascading...
Missouri Department of Elementary
Communicating with I-Messages (2/2)
Class members read a handout to learn about using I-Messages—honest statements that begin with I to get their points of view across. Next, learners practice using I-Messages with partners to better communicate without hurting...
Northern Nevada Council for the Social Studies
What Are the Origins and Influences of Rap Music?
Considered an American art form, rap has its roots in places from Jamaica to the Bronx. Using a series of readings, comprehension questions, and videos, scholars explore the history of rap and its connections to the African diaspora....
Curated OER
Answering an Essay Style Question
Writing an essay can seem like a daunting task, but it can be a lot easier when learners are given an outline of expectations. This resource provides a step-by-step explanation of how to answer an essay question. However, the...