Unit Plan
Louisiana Department of Education

How to Write a Memoir

For Students 6th - 8th Standards
Who are we and what shapes our identities? Seventh graders work to answer this question as they learn how to write a memoir. Full of non-print resources and supplemental texts that range from fiction to non-fiction, scholars write their...
Handout
Curated OER

The Heart of Your Paper: 11 Methods for Writing a Topic Sentence (or a Thesis Statement)

For Teachers 5th - 8th Standards
Help your young writers produce high-quality topic and thesis statements that go beyond basic wording and really illustrate complex ideas and critical thinking skills. From however and compound sentence statements to using...
Lesson Plan
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1
Hold McDougal

Songwriting Skill - Finding Your Style: Elisa Victoria - “No Surprise”

For Teachers 5th - 10th
Hip Hop? Country? Punk? R and B? So many styles. Young song writers consider the emotional effects of various style options before selecting the style best suited to the emotions they want to express in their song. The sixth in a...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

8th Grade Reading Comprehension Success

For Students 8th Standards
Augment your eighth grade language arts curriculum with a thorough set of reading comprehension activities and assessments. Focusing on a variety of skills, including vocabulary in context, text structure, main idea, and author's style,...
Lesson Plan
Nancy Fetzer's Literacy Connections

Expository Paragraph

For Teachers 5th - 8th Standards
Upper elementary and middle school writers learn how to craft an expository paragraph by following the six steps detailed in a 48-page instructional guide. Learners learn how to write six different types of informational paragraphs:...
Lesson Plan
1
1
Curated OER

The Rumpelstiltskin Story

For Teachers 6th - 8th Standards
Why didn't Rapunzel's hair stop growing?  Why did it take the fairy godmother so long to intervene in Cinderella's affairs? Young writers consider unanswered questions like these and compose news articles investigating the true...
Lesson Plan
1
1
Utah Education Network (UEN)

8th Grade Poetry: Sonnet Poem

For Teachers 8th Standards
The third lesson of five in an eighth-grade poetry unit has young scholars comparing Shakespearean sonnets with Petrarchan sonnets. To begin, they examine the different structures of the two forms and their different rhyme schemes. After...
Writing
Perfection Learning

In The Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson - Activity Book

For Students 3rd - 6th Standards
Moving to a new country isn't easy, as Shirley Temple Wong learns in In The Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson by Bette Bao Lord. A series of language arts activities carry readers through the novel, addressing the story's themes,...
Activity
2
2
Southern Nevada Regional Professional Development Program

The Columnist Project

For Teachers 11th - 12th Standards
Imagine a list that includes Alan Abelson of Baron's, Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, and Mother Jones. High schoolers select a national columnist, read and annotate five columns by this author, noting the rhetorical...
Lesson Plan
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Curated OER

Acid Rain

For Teachers 4th - 5th Standards
Create a simulation of acid rain in your classroom with lemon juice and bean plants to help kids study the effects of pollution on plants. In addition, learners will listen to a story and write responses based on guiding questions.
Lesson Plan
Illustrative Mathematics

Radius of a Cylinder

For Teachers 8th - 12th Standards
Here is a multiple choice question that would make a good assessment question. Algebra students are to look at the structure of the formula for a given radius of a cylinder and find the resulting radius when the height of the...
Lesson Plan
Penguin Books

White Fang Teacher's Notes

For Teachers 6th - 8th
If you're looking for a way to structure your unit on Jack London's White Fang, use a well-organized guide to bring the intrigue of the novel to your middle school classroom. Covering a biography of the author, main background and...
Lesson Plan
EngageNY

Completing the Square (part 2)

For Students 9th - 10th Standards
Give classes confidence in completing the square with a resource that develops the process of completing the square of more complex problems, including fractions and values greater than one. It then uses quadratic modeling for...