Scholars read, analyze, and evaluate argumentative writing. Discussion about arguments of mass incarceration evolves from The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Learners participate in group discussions and...

Working in teams, pairs, or individually, scholars select one resource from a gallery of historical sources and consider which examples might be considered propaganda, the techniques used to persuade audiences, and evaluate how the...

Let's go for a walk. Learners complete the mid-unit assessment by completing a gallery walk to analyze different primary sources discussed while reading A Mighty Long Way. After viewing the sources, class members complete organizers and...

Readers learn to ask questions about text with an activity based on Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea. As they read, class members craft questions based on Bloom's Taxonomy and then find the answers themselves.

Reading the news is fun, and that's a fact! With the lesson plan, scholars differentiate between fact and opinion as they read editorial articles. They complete a worksheet to analyze the information before writing their own editorials...

Young scholars research the social context of Elizabethan England for Shakespeare's "Hamlet". They identify cultural influences on the play focusing on the theme of revenge and then analyze and compare film interpretations of the play.

Young orators demonstrate what they have learned about persuasion and persuasive devices throughout the unit by analyzing a persuasive speech and then crafting their persuasive essays. Class members engage in a role-play exercise, use...

Even the most thrilling sports career can end in an asterisk if the player uses performance-enhancing drugs. Focused on the topic of doping in sports, a seventh grade unit breaks down the arguments for and against steroids in five...

Not all sources are created equal, so how do you evaluate them? Writers learn how to evaluate print sources based on elements such as audience, tone, and argument in the sixth handout of 24 in the Writing the Paper series from the...

There is a reason why an Oscar is given each year for the Best Adaptation Screenplay. Adaptations are the focus of an exercise that asks class members to compare a work of literature with a least one adaptation of the work into a...

A lesson plan instills the importance of locating reliable sources. Scholars are challenged to locate digital sources, analyze their reliability, search for any bias, and identify frequently found problems that make a source unusable. 

Quench the class's thirst for knowledge while building analytical skills. Scholars listen as the teacher reads excerpt from the book The Big Thirst. They then complete a close read and answer text-dependent questions from pages one...

Scholars analyze fiction and nonfiction text and fill in a worksheet detailing the text's title, genre, and reason for its classification.

Sorry, Charlie. Scholars take a close look at Apology by Plato. Activities analyzing the text help pupils understand, make, organize, and write about claims. Learners work in groups, complete claim tools, and evaluate thinking by filling...

What did you say? Class members read Teen Slang: What’s, Like, So Wrong with Like and make notes in the margin to determine the gist. They then analyze the text to identify claims made and the evidence to support the claims....

Young journalists use the E.S.C.A.P.E. (evidence, source, context, audience, purpose, and execution) strategy to evaluate historical and contemporary examples of bias in the news. The class then uses the provided discussion questions to...

As your class finishes the novel Dragonwings, use these culminating projects. A vocabulary list is given for chapters eleven and twelve and either an epitaph or letter activity concludes the book. The final project consists of creating a...

Good news articles are engaging, informative, and often compelling. In the first lesson of the four-part series, young journalists analyze and evaluate news stories about former NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom. They learn about the...

Explore the origin of political parties in the United States. Learners work in groups to read and analyze copies of the "Report on Manufactures" written by Alexander Hamilton. Then, they complete a worksheet comparing the Federalists to...

How is religious freedom connected to the conflict between China and Tibet? After reading an online passage of background information, your learners will divide into groups and both read and view an interview with the Dalai Lama. They...

Students examine the history of the Holocaust through literature. Using different pieces of literature, they critique the items in terms of being historical accurate and its value in telling the stories of the Holocaust. They create a...

To conclude a study of A Raisin in the Sun and to prepare for a visit to the Lewis Museum, class members analyze Langston Hughes' poem "Harlem." Learners then draw connections to characters in the play and to their own experiences...

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs provides the lens class members use to analyze and evaluate the motivations of the characters in Sylvia Plath's "Initiation" and scenes from Mean Girls. Readers then select a character from A...

Readers apply Sigmund Freud's theories of the unconscious mind and the psychological approach to literary criticism to analyze and evaluate the relationship between two characters in A Separate Peace.