Literacy Design Collaborative
Elie Wiesel's Acceptance Speech Analysis
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...
Odell Education
Reading Closely for Textual Details: Grades 9-10
Pupils work in small groups to answer guided questions and discuss the details they found. They also read independently, improving strategies they learned to approach and question text.
Odell Education
Reading Closely for Textual Details: "We, as a people, will get to the promised land!"
Take another look—there are probably more details than readers realize. Scholars analyze nine texts in a five-part unit that contains 21 activities to find textual details. Activities include close reading, independent reading,...
Great Books Foundation
State of Affairs
Good verses evil. Scholars make inferences after taking a close look at the short story, State of Affairs, in which Daniel Defoe goes back and forth comparing good and evil thoughts through his writing. After reading the text, there are...
College Board
Evaluating Sources: How Credible Are They?
How can learners evaluate research sources for authority, accuracy, and credibility? By completing readings, discussions, and graphic organizers, scholars learn how to properly evaluate sources to find credible information. Additionally,...
College Board
The Departure
Scholars learn about the Hero's Journey as they read Ray Bradbury's "The Drummer Boy of Shiloh." They analyze the story's structure and narrative techniques. Finally, they write summaries of the text's central idea and use their...
Society for Science & the Public
Easter Islanders Made Tools, Not War
When studying artifacts, especially tools, how do archaeologists determine what the devices were used for? In what ways might researchers' previous experiences influence their perception of an artifact? An article about researchers'...
Teaching for Change
A Documents-Based Lesson on the Voting Rights Act
How did the Voting Rights Act affect the daily lives of American citizens? A document-based lesson plan developed by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating committee (SNCC) presents a case study of the impact of the Voting Rights Act of...
University of North Carolina
Reading to Write
Silly journal and essay prompts may be fun to write, but they don't model the kind of writing needed for college papers and standardized tests. The 15th part in a series of 24 covers the concept of reading to write—during and after...
National Endowment for the Humanities
The Preamble to the Constitution: A Close Reading Lesson
"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union..." These familiar lines begin the Preamble to the Constitution, but do learners know what they mean? A close reading exercise takes a look at the language of the...
Novelinks
Touching Spirit Bear: Directed Reading Thinking Activity
What experiences lead people to change and how do they do it? After reading about Cole's encounter with Touching Spirit Bear, readers complete the second out of a series of five activities to predict future events in the text. The...
Novelinks
Touching Spirit Bear: Question Answer Response Strategy
What types of questions help readers learn the most? Sixth, seventh, and eighth graders learn how to ask four types of questions from the Question Answer Response (QAR) reading strategy to help grow their comprehension of Touching Spirit...
Santa Ana Unified School District
Early American Poets
The poems of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson are the focus of a unit that asks readers to consider how an artist's life and changes in society influences his or her work. After careful study of Whitman's and Dickinson's perspectives on...
National Humanities Center
Teaching Emily Dickinson: A Common Core Close Reading Seminar
Three of Emily Dickinson's poems, "I like to see it," "Because I could not stop for Death," and "We grow accustomed to the Dark," provide instructors with an opportunity to model for class members how to use close reading strategies to...
Teaching Channel
Storyboard Lesson Plan
Good books are accessible through a variety of literary lenses. To consider how the same story can be seen in different lights, groups develop a storyboard for a movie teaser that would focus on one of six concepts found in Suzanne...
West Jefferson High School
The Novel — Honor
For classes tackling To Kill a Mockingbird, this lesson plan sets readers up for discussions or essay writing with questions and prompts. The prompts encourage individuals to explore beyond the novel itself, looking at photographs from...
EngageNY
Grade 9 ELA Module 4, Unit 1, Lesson 8
In a close reading of "The Overseer" chapter from Sugar Changed the World, groups focus on the words Aronson and Budhos use to contrast the lifestyles of enslaved people and their enslavers. The whole class then engages in an...
University of Virginia
Analyzing Social Commentary in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn continues to be one of the most frequently banned books. The satire and social commentary present challenges when using the book as a core text. Direct readers' attention to how Twain uses plot,...
EngageNY
Grade 9 ELA Module 2, Unit 3, Lesson 8
Class members continue reading "How Bernard Madoff Did It" and annotate how the author refines his idea that the Madoff scandal grabbed the attention of a public fascinated with crime stories.
EngageNY
Grade 9 ELA Module 2, Unit 3, Lesson 2
"Everybody is guilty of something." As class members continue their close reading of Walter Mosley's essay, they examine how Mosley develops and supports his central ideas about Western civilization's relationship to guilt.
Odell Education
Reading Closely for Textual Details: Grade 7
Enhance the reading experience with a set of lessons designed to improve textual analysis. Seventh graders use guiding questions to read both informational text and literature closely in the first part of the unit. Next, they work on...
Sunburst Visual Media
Clouds
Support science instruction with a combination of engaging activities and skills-based worksheets that focus on clouds. Learners take part in grand discussions, write an acrostic poem, complete graphic organizers, solve word puzzles, and...
EngageNY
Grade 9 ELA Module 2, Unit 2, Lesson 2
Continue a thoughtful analysis of Sophocles' Oedipus the King by discussing the importance of dialogue within the play's structure. Ninth graders examine how Oedipus speaks about himself to his subjects and Creon before recording their...
EngageNY
Grade 9 ELA Module 1: Unit 3, Lesson 7
How does Shakespeare use dialogue to develop the idea that the star-crossed lovers are more concerned with their relationship as individuals than they are with their roles as children of warring families? That is the question facing...