Examine the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. After reading an article from the New York Times and exploring the author's word choice, young readers find the central idea in the text and work on researching...

Students read Arthur's Pet Business and  complete a pre-writing worksheet for expository writing.  In this paragraph writing instructional activity, students gather and organize material for a paragraph about pets.

Help your middle-schoolers expand their writing skills with this lesson on episodic writing, which focuses on story details, idea development, and organization. After reading "The Eighth Picture: End of Summer" from Patricia Reilly...

As part of an lesson involving literature or writing, have your learners watch and discuss this presentation on plot development. In a series of slides, viewers engage in an activity to explore dramatic structure, including plot...

Study some of the most prominent poets and works of poetry in history with a language arts poetry unit. From Virgil to Shakespeare to Dickinson to Angelou, the resources present biographies and examples of poetic elements to...

How are short stories from South Africa connected to issues of civil rights in the United States? A unit plan uses South African short stories to discuss issues such as apartheid, colonization, and civil rights. Questions and activities...

Your class continues to explore the history of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In addition to learning about the background of this text, learners work on the skill of identifying and understanding key academic vocabulary....

Improve class understanding of colonial times by reading an informational text and filling out the accompanying graphic organizer. Class members work with a partner to read, take notes, make inferences, and synthesize information.The...

This is a skills-based assessment that asks test takers to use textual evidence to determine the main idea of an excerpt from an informational text as well as respond to text-dependent questions. The assessment is the middle point...

Challenge your class with this activity! Learners read The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, discuss context clues, identify main ideas and details, and analyze story elements. Discussion questions and activities are broken down for each...

What would you do if...? That's a great question, and, when posed to learners with visual impairments, a question that can foster concept development and speaking and problem-solving skills that relate to real-life situations. The...

Why is a letter a better way to learn about a person than a different primary source? Explore Thomas Day's ideas and advice to his daughter in a letter from 1851, which details the struggles of the American South before the Civil War....

Frogs are the theme of a lesson plan that challenges scholars to examine photographs, read informational texts, then ask and answer questions. Scholars work collaboratelively as they rotate through stations, discuss their observations,...

How does Shakespeare develop the theme of control in A Midsummer Night's Dream? Using the resource, scholars analyze the theme of parental control in the play and the Greek myth "Pyramus and Thisbe." Next, they talk to partners to...

Interpret current events using editorial cartoons and other print media. Middle schoolers explore the meanings of literary and artistic terms such as satire, irony, and caricature. They visit internet sites to develop an understanding of...

Barbie has been an iconic figure in the lives of girls since the 1950s, but her existence has been full of controversy. A lesson plan on style, format, and genre explores that controversy by looking at three texts with different...

What makes a good advocate? An informative lesson plan teaches class members how to advocate persuasively. They participate in a fishbowl activity and listen to the teacher model advocating persuasively. They then practice independently,...

Learners of all ages hear the words “Today we’re going to start poetry” and begin their plans to drop out of school. It is not the teacher's fault! Use this resource to help young scholars understand the genre of poetry and why it is...

"Advertising has no impact on whether people buy something." "Looting is morally permissible during national disasters and emergencies." "Gay teenagers should be allowed to take dates to the prom." Considering a class debate? Check out...

What do spiders' legs and an octopus's eyeball have to do with metaphors? The fourth lesson plan in an 11-part unit designed to accompany The Twits by Roald Dahl uses disgusting foods to teach about metaphoric writing.

Young writers compose a gripping ending to their historical fiction narratives. Following the previous lesson plan, where learners wrote a bold beginning, class members examine exciting endings from a literary text. They then draft their...

Take a walk with me. Scholars participate in a gallery walk of the anchor charts their groups created about Inside Out & Back Again in the previous lesson plan. Pupils take notes about Ha's character on sticky notes as they take the...

Scholars read "Doc-Lap at Last" and participate in a Three Threes in a Row activity in which they answer three questions about the text in their rows. They then discuss the central idea of the text. Readers finish the lesson plan with a...

Shake up the writing process with a peer critique. The second of four lessons in the Grade 8 ELA Module 2B, Unit 3 series first has young writers compare their interpretations of a scene from William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's...