Identifying an author’s choice, especially choices that concern craft and literary devices, is a difficult skill to teach. Here's an activity that will make your job easier. The resource breaks down how to teach the skill to novice,...

Sometimes a whole story can change based on the perspective of the person telling it. Practice identifying and analyzing point of view in various reading passages and writing assignments with a language arts packet, complete with Common...

Build understanding of theme with an activity designed for The Cay and the Common Core. Small groups or pairs use graphic organizers to determine themes, find and record related details from the text, and formulate theme statements. In...

Your learners need to develop skills to argue effectively, and this comes by understanding the traditions that make claims valid, and what detracts from their effectiveness.  Although this resource does not give advice on how to...

Explore a real world use of poetry with your class! Young language arts pupils consider the concept of advocacy and how journalism, photography, and poetry can raise awareness for a cause. They read several poems about individuals...

Introduce young readers to informational texts with a well-designed, ready-to-use, and Common Core-aligned unit. Young readers learn a variety of skills while studying the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). As the first...

Sometimes a novel is the best way to tackle a tough topic. A helpful educator's guide for the novels of Gayle Forman discuss tough topics such as teenage suicide. Discussion questions and writing activities encourage readers to think...

Wrap up your literary analysis unit with a discussion activity as tenth graders prepare for an end-of-unit assessment. After they have read and annotated Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepard to His Love," Sir Walter Raleigh's...

As part of a study of the Civil Rights Movement, class members examine documents associated with the Little Rock Nine, the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, the 14th and 15th Amendments to the US Constitution, and chapters from Melba...

How have educational standards evolved? Educators of adults examine expectations in the 10th workshop out of 15 to better determine how standards have grown. Participants respond to a variety of sample questions to determine how they...

Focus on plot and the impact-specific events in The Cay. Class members use their double-entry journals, created in a previous lesson in this series, to record their thinking about the guiding question as they read chapters 15 through 17....

Looking for a performance assessment that asks individuals to demonstrate their competency in writing about informational text? Use Frederick Douglass' essay "On the Dred Scott Decision," and an excerpt from Abraham Lincoln's 1857 speech...

Discover how the human body's digestive system works with a brain and stomach friendly activity. Scholars taste test a variety of foods to find out how they behave once in the mouth. Class members then play a game called Move That...

Get started with The Cay. First, provide some background information and images that relate to the novel. Then pupils can create double-entry journals. Once that is complete, read the first two chapters, encouraging individuals to record...

Encourage your learners to examine the setting in Theodore Taylor's The Cay. Pupils work in small groups to put together a description of the setting before reading two more chapters of the book. They use their double-entry journals to...

What were the conditions that led to the American Revolution? What are the conditions that lead to revolution in other times and places? Class members examine primary source materials and use evidence drawn from these documents to craft...

Young scholars investigate modular clock arithmetic and cryptography. They perform basic operations in modular (clock) arithmetic and encode and decode messages using simple shift and affine ciphers.

[Free Registration/Login Required] This rubric helps teachers guide students in grades 6-8 in making effective presentations in a project, and it can be used to assess their performance. Alignment with CCSS is not noted. It describes an...

[Free Registration/Login Required] This rubric helps teachers guide students in grades 9-12 in making effective presentations in a project, and it can be used to assess their performance. Alignment with CCSS is not noted. It describes an...

[Free Registration/Login Required] This rubric helps teachers guide students in grades 9-12 in making effective presentations in a project, and it can be used to assess their performance. Alignment with CC ELA standards for Speaking and...

[Free Registration/Login Required] This rubric helps teachers guide students in grades 3-5 in making effective presentations in a project, and it can be used to assess their performance. Alignment with CC ELA standards for Speaking and...

[Free Registration/Login Required] This rubric helps with guiding and assessing K-2 students in giving a presentation. It is aligned with CCSS, but also can be used in non-CCSS settings. It is clear, concrete, and student-friendly, and...