Where I'm From: Personal and Cherokee

Encourage narrative writing with a clever exercise. Class members watch episodes from movies and describe what happened to a character, including details about the setting, plot, and characters. Writers then craft a narrative about a...

An extensive portfolio project encourages your kids to reflect on their personalities with multiple writing assignments. From activities on extended metaphors to writing about an important day in their lives, kids explore the way they...

Letters have long been prized by historians as primary sources for what they reveal not only about events but also about the emotional responses of the writers to these events. "My Dear Little Boys," a letter written by Leonard Isacks on...

Which do you use: that or this? Which or where? Me or I? Practice pronoun use with a series of activities that focus on personal and demonstrative pronouns.

Encourage readers to determine if Hamlet's madness is actually divinest sense. Class members analyze the words of the play before studying related texts, including T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," scenes from...

Are student athletes under too much pressure to perform? Middle schoolers use evidence from a series of provided videos and articles to support their stance on this highly-charged topic. 

The Statue of Liberty may embrace the huddled masses of the world, but has American society always joined in? After young historians read a passage about the history of American immigration in the 19th and 20th centuries, focusing on...

If you've never heard of the Equal Rights Amendment, it's probably because there isn't one in the United States Constitution. Delve into the contentious history behind the ERA, its founders and supporters, and reasons for its political...

Imagery is the focus of this lesson plan, featuring "The Moon is distant from the Sea" by Emily Dickinson. Readers discuss the lunar cycle and its connection to the speaker's desires, and then choose an image from the poem to compare to...

Learners make a connection between the place where they live and the people who occupied that place before them. They write a "Where I'm From"poem from their point of view and from that of a Cherokee Indian.