Kids age 13 and older are asked to read the provided Times article and background information in order to construct a thoughtful blog response to Obama's first Oval Office speech. They work to address each of the related critical...

Eeny, meany, miny, moe. It's time to choose a side. Scholars learn about taking a position by watching a video of a speech about local organic food. Next, pupils use graphic organizers to plan their speeches about which food chain is...

Looking for a lesson that teaches class members how to analyze nonfiction? Use Joseph McCarthy's famous "Enemies from Within" speech as a instructional text. Worksheet questions direct readers' attention to the many historical...

“America herself is an improbable journey.” So is Deval Patrick’s journey from the South Side of Chicago to the governorship of Massachusetts. The complete text of Patrick’s inaugural speech, delivered outdoors facing Boston Common,...

Should Juneteenth be recognized as a national holiday? To prepare to take a stance on this question, young historians first analyze the Emancipation Proclamation and compare it to Lincoln's first Inaugural Address. Scholars then read an...

Reinforce important reading skills with a set of vocabulary lesson plans. Middle schoolers complete sentences, play word games, finish analogies, and build their growing vocabulary with a packet of helpful and applicable graphic organizers.

Is the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) good for America? The informative website is a one-stop shop for ACLU debate resources. Scholars read about the topics surrounding the issue, including free speech, national security, and...

"Friend, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears..." Those words begin one of the most persuasive speeches in literature. Explore the elements of persuasion in a series of lessons related to William Shakespeare's Julius...

You class can learn all about how to form the imperfect with -ar and -er/-ir verbs. The slides do cover the only verbs that are irregular in the tense and the situations for which you use the imperfect (plus examples). Go over the...

Once your class has mastered the indicative, it's time to present the subjunctive mood. This resource focuses solely on how to conjugate in the present subjunctive, but does link to more information on how to to use it. Class members can...

First ladies often take a back seat to their husbands' policies, but Eleanor Roosevelt broke that mold. Interested historians examine primary sources written by Roosevelt, including a speech and articles. Completing a round-robin of...

Encourage the knights and princesses in your class to practice adjective clauses and relative pronouns in a fairy tale-themed presentation! Several slides review the structure of sentences with adjective clauses before prompting your...

Ring in the spring with a study of adverbs. These spring worksheets cover when and how to use adverbs, provide plenty of adverbs to try out, and use images of spring as inspiration for students to tap into as they write original sentences.

Practice verb tense by filling in the blank. Learners evaluate the provided verb in the context of its sentence and then fill in the blank with the proper tense of that verb. There are 15 sentences to evaluate.

Here is a simple list of 21 idioms for which learners are supposed to write the figurative meanings. I'd extend it to include either drawing pictures or group discussions to build meaning rather than just assigning it as individual work.

Pupils create a lesson to present to the rest of the class about current laws, including expressing killing the president as a joke. Students research past events and current laws. Pupils present to the class using mult-media, oral...

Following an exhaustive list of animal idioms, metaphors, and similes (categorized by animal), an online interactive quiz checks reader facility with their use. In each of 20 questions, a sentence has a definition for one expression in...

Students read a variety of well-known studenT books and discuss concepts presented in the books as they relate to the Bill of Rights. They discuss the books and compare them to the Bill of Rights Amendments.

After reading an example of a Cultural Connection about a particular person, class members are asked to think about what this person might experience on a daily basis. They then craft a narrative from the subject’s point of view.

Feeling high is not the only side effect of abusing prescription opioids. Middle and high schoolers learn more about specific painkillers, including Fentanyl, Oxycodone, and Clonazepam, as well as their common brand names and extensive...

If you're looking to start a unit based around narrative writing, make sure to consider this resource while you're planning. This book covers five topics: writing personal narratives, writing narratives about others, writing...

A short film about music is the inspiration for a well-sequenced lesson that includes discussion, group work, and writing. After the whole class converses about music, small groups write narratives about a still from the film. Pupils...

In this conjunctions worksheet, students read about conjunctions and then take a multiple choice quiz on them. Students complete 10 questions.

Elie Wiesel's Nobel Prize Acceptance speech provides young historians with an opportunity to demonstrate their ability to use evidence from the speech. They work together to analyze how Wiesel uses rhetorical devices and syntax to...