What is it that makes people keep going when they face challenges in life? Ask your class to consider this question in relation to their own experiences and as they read material from The New York Times. Using personal experiences...

Students identify geographical features of different regions encountered by migrants on the Oregon trail. Students research how the Oregon landscape may have affected life and 19th century westward migration. Students write a narrative...

What does is take to be a role model? Through grand conversation, and the use of books and a graphic organizer, scholars find out and apply the requirements to identify a role model within their family. They then journey through the...

How do your pupils want to change the world? Find out with this writing prompt, inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s well-known speech. The resource provides the prompt and lines for writing.

Readers of Solomon Northup's brutally frank slave narrative Twelve Years a Slave examine passages that support the argument that slavery "undermined and corrupted" the institution of marriage. Background information is...

Students examine the slave perspective and how it differs from stories we hear in text books. In this slave narrative lesson, students use primary source narratives to compare how slave life was expressed by the slaves to how slave life...

Learners create narrative cartoons based on the activities of the Peace Corps. In this narrative cartoons lesson plan, students create comic strips where they draw and write about various activities that the Peace Corps is involved in.

This St. Patrick's Day, young writers imagine they found a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. After a class discussion and brainstorming, scholars compose a narrative essay making sure they incorporate transitions and at least three...

Scholars examine the first Thanksgiving through books and interviews while they complete a KWL chart. Pretending they are part of the feast, learners craft a scrapbook page that features images related to their experience. Pupils reflect...

Bring a time machine into your classroom with this writing lesson, in which young writers project themselves back in time and have a variety of choices from that point forward. They either write a conversation with a historical figure,...

The firsthand accounts of what it was like to be an enslaved person in the mid-1800s riveted a nation and the issue ultimately led to civil war. Using excerpts from Frederick Douglass's autobiography, budding historians examine what it...

Students examine narratives of two slaves: iam W. Brown and Frederick Douglas. They produce an essay explaining how Brown's narrative challenged the prejudices of readers in his own time and how it challenges prejudices today.

Young scholars use examples of narrative and expository text to analyze and compare the two styles. Young scholars read articles on life in Lesotho and Madagascar and use graphic organizers and discussion to compare them. Young scholars...

Women were in the workplace long before Rosie the Riveter pushed up her sleeve. Learn about the working options available to women during the Industrial Revolution, the Progressive Era, and the Great Depression with a lesson that...

Travel back in American history to the era of slavery and abolition. After reading about the Underground Railroad, young historians examine a painting depicting the event, and write a narrative from the point of view of a person in the...

Katherine Paterson’s young adult novel Lyddie is the foundation of a differentiated instruction unit that not only explores the rise of industrialization and labor but women’s rights issues as well. After learners read the novel, they...

Students examine the narrative forms and tales unique to the U.S.-Mexico border. They discuss the possible sociological meanings of these stories, and then write their own versions to demonstrate that they explain the forms.

How was your year? Create an individual timeline that document learners' personal history from the previous year. After reading an article about celebrating New Year's in Japan, pairs interview each other to gather information about...

The Nineteenth Amendment granted women the right to vote—as long as they were white. High schoolers read articles and essays about racism in the suffrage movement and consider how intersectionality played a role in the movement. Scholars...

Ninth graders explore the concept that education is related to freedom. In this human rights lesson plan, 9th graders read The Narrative of Frederick Douglass. Students dialogue about their readings and education as it relates to human...

Students work with the slave narrative as a resource for historical study and evaluate it as a work of literature; students then examine the narrative in the context of political controversy as an argument for abolition.

In this comparative essay worksheet, students read and complete the narrative for the assignment that requires them to prepare predrafts of their comparative-scholarly articles.

This is a strange question; but what kind of vessel would you be and why? After examining images of a large Inca jug, the class sets to writing a creative narrative that answers that very interesting question. They start by researching...

A reading of Whale Journey, a fact-filled picture book by Vivian French, launches a study of the life cycle and migration of three generations of gray whales. The interdisciplinary lesson offers opportunities extensions into all subject...