EngageNY
End of Unit 1 Assessment: Analyzing an Excerpt from Barack Obama’s Back-to-School Speech
In order to assess their mastery of the concepts taught in a 12-lesson plan unit study of Christopher Paul Curtis' Bud, Not Buddy, individuals read excerpts from President Barack Obama's 2009 Back-to-School Speech and use the strategies...
Curated OER
Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass: A Compare and Contrast Lesson Plan
Two great men, one time period, and one purpose; it sounds like a movie trailer, but it's not. It's a very good comparative analysis lesson plan focused on Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Learners will research and read...
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 1
Make a study of the First Amendment and its relationship to freedom. Pupils rewrite the amendment and discuss the central idea before focusing on a specific phrase. After discussing, class members write a journal entry about the included...
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 5
Building on the previous activity in this series of lesson seeds, this plan focuses on the use of dialect in Theodore Taylor's novel, The Cay. Class members examine specific lines of text, use their reading journals to respond to the...
Stanford University
Lesson Plan: Montgomery Bus Boycott
Most of us have heard of Rosa Parks, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and Martin Luther King, Jr. But what about Claudette Colvin, Virginia Durr, Freedom Summer, or the Birmingham Children's Crusade? A five-lesson unit prompts class members...
Curriculum Corner
ELA Common Core Checklists for K-6
In the hustle and bustle of life in the classroom, it's easy for teachers to lose track of the standards they have taught, and those that still need to be addressed. This Common Core checklist provides educators with an easy-to-use...
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 6 Close Reading
Look back at the third chapter of The Cay with your class. Pupils will conduct a close reading, taking a second look at a chunk of text and responding to a series of text-dependent questions. Wrap up with an analytical writing prompt...
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 2
Use Langston Hughes's poem, "Words Like Freedom," to explore the concepts of freedom and liberty. Learners read the poem, determine the theme, and use the provided graphic organizer to examine the connotative and denotative meanings of...
Curated OER
Denial on Trial
What is the "Faurisson Affair”? What is “Holocaust Revisionism”? What does freedom of speech entail? Do revisionists have a right to voice their ideas? Such questions are at the heart of a richly detailed, thought provoking lesson...
ESL Library
Muhammad Ali
"Float like a butterfly, and sting like a bee" with a resource about the greatest boxer of our generation. A short biographical reading passage introduces young readers to Muhammad Ali, and includes information about his early life as...
National Park Service
A Tale of Two Men
Theodore Roosevelt and the Marquis de Mores were both born in 1858, and both came to the Dakota territory in 1883, but they influenced the developing country of America in different ways. Elementary and middle schoolers apply written and...
Curated OER
The 44th and 45th USA Presidents
The transition of power between former President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump may be the first political process that your middle schoolers have followed. Fill out the details between these two leaders with a set of vocabulary...