It's pass or fail, and one must pass to move on to the next lesson—no pressure. The second of seven installments in the Off the Grid unit has pupils demonstrate their knowledge of vocabulary as well as the process of using a multimeter....

Provenance, source, date, location, and motivation. High schoolers learn how to verify the authenticity of news stories and posts by following a seven-step process. They then use the strategy to determine the original site that posted a...

Verification of provenance and the original source of an image or video can be a long and winding process. Young journalists learn about the difficulty of finding the original source of a scrape, a copy of an original news story, and...

After discussing the significance of a Coat ofArms, eighth graders design their own to represent their strengths, values, goals, and culture.

A lesson challenges scholars to get organized. A thoughtful discussion sheds light on time management and the benefits of staying organized. Learners then reflect on their current time management skills, organize notebooks or...

Outcome + available resources  +  schedule + timeline + steps to complete project = Action Plan! The second lesson in the "Service Learning" module outlines for scholars the steps to take when designing an action plan for their...

Need a hero? Super! Groups create their modern-day marvel and craft a narrative with all the elements required in such a tale.

An astronaut, a fashion designer, a Secretary of the Interior, an actor, and an Olympic Gold Medal winner! Teens and tweens have an opportunity to be changemakers as they research modern Native Americans and their many accomplishments...

Eighth graders craft a Petrarchan sonnet and respond to a performance assessment to demonstrate what they have learned in this five-lesson plan poetry unit.

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...

Two sonnets provide seventh graders with examples of Shakespearean sonnets. After discussing the story of the poems and analyzing their rhyme scheme and rhythm, young poets craft a Shakespearian sonnet and share their work with two...

To assess what scholars have learned throughout a five-lesson poetry unit, seventh graders first craft a Shakespearean sonnet based on a poem they have studied. In part two of the assessment, scholars complete a four-texts performance task.

Take your class of youngsters on a prehistoric adventure with this four-lesson series on dinosaurs. Accompanying the Meet the Dinosaurs books by Don Lessem, these lessons engage children in writing their own dinosaur books,...

After discussing the narrative structure, intended audience, and purpose of Chapter 1 of The Autobiography of Malcolm X, class members draft their statement of purpose for a Common College Application prompt that distinguishes them from...

The final lesson in this narrative writing unit asks class members to craft a multi-paragraph essay reflecting on the structural elements Leslie Marmon Silko employs in her "Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit."

Word choice can drastically alter the tone of a piece of writing. Ninth graders read Karen Russell's short story "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves" and use textual evidence to help them analyze how word choice affects their...

The intricate craft of narrative writing can make a happy story feel exuberant or a sad story feel devastating. With 42 extensive lessons that include poignant discussion questions, standards-aligned self-reflections, engaging writing...

How do writers develop a central idea in a text? How can readers identify this central idea? These are the challenges class members tackle as they continue their analysis of "Letter One" from Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet.

After viewing a clip from Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet in which major characters are introduced, and the violence between the Montagues and the Capulets is depicted, the class reads Act 1, Scene 1, lines 158-202. Groups then analyze the...

Once conceived, a guided set of literary analysis lessons will assist you day and night. Ninth graders look closely at "The Tell-Tale Heart" and analyze how Poe uses point of view to create questions about the narrator's sanity and...

Whether the planks hide the beating of a hideous heart or they break away to the madness beneath, their presence makes itself known in the final instructional activity of a literary analysis unit. Having gathered textual evidence from...

Using the open-ended discussion questions developed the day before, class members engage in a fishbowl discussion of the three texts that anchor the unit: “True Crime: The Roots of an American Obsession," “How Bernard Madoff Did It,” and...

Ninth graders continue their inquiry-based research projects focused on the topics in Temple Grandin's Animals in Translation. After formulating, honing, and adapting their research frames in the previous lessons, learners select...

After a peer review of their outlines, class members examine a model of an effective, engaging introduction and then craft the first draft of the introduction to their research paper.