EngageNY
Paragraph Writing, Part 1: How Esperanza Responds on the Train (Revisiting Chapter 5: "Las Guayabas/Guavas")
When your class members have completed the novel Esperanza Rising, they will be ready to write an expository essay on how Esperanza responds to events and what this says about her character. Set your pupils up for success by...
Gwinnett County Public Schools
Analysis of the Tuck Everlasting and The Birchbark House Text Exemplars
Looking to introduce some text-based questions into your ELA lessons? Practice the kinds of skills the Common Core demands with the seven text-based questions and the essay prompt provided here. Designed to be a three-day lesson, day one...
Curated OER
Reading Poetry in the Middle Grades
Bring the beauty of "Nothing Gold Can Stay" by Robert Frost to middle school language arts. After learners read a copy of the poem, they follow an instructional sequence that focuses on sound, figurative language, and theme.
Curated OER
Slavery in Colonial America
Learners examine the experience of the middle passage of slaves. They review slave songs and discuss their common themes. They develop a monologue in which they integrate a fragment of an actual slave song into a poem they have written.
ELA Common Core Lesson Plans
American Romanticism
Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Rappaccini's Daughter" provides the text for an activity that asks readers to select specific passages from the story, identify the aspect of American Romanticism the passage exemplifies, and then provide an...
Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy
A Search for Symbolism in The Great Gatsby
After reading The Great Gatsby, groups return to the text and note passages where Fitzgerald uses symbols and color imagery in his narrative. They then develop a presentation that explains the context, the implications, and possible...
Curated OER
Performance-Based Assessment Practice Test (Grade 4 ELA/Literacy)
Track the progress of your fourth graders' reading and writing skills with this practice Common Core assessment. Based on a collection of six reading passages that include narrative stories, poetry, and a series of...
Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
Slave Narratives: Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and the Columbian Orator
Young historians practice in-depth, quality analysis of primary source texts in this three-lesson unit, which examines excerpts from the slave narratives of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and Caleb...
Curated OER
End-of-Year Practice Test (Grade 4 ELA/Literacy)
The time has come to find out what your fourth grade readers have learned after another year of hard work. This Common Core-designed practice assessment provides two reading passages, one narrative and one expository, that children must...
Curated OER
End-of-Year Practice Test (Grade 6 ELA/Literacy)
With the end of the year quickly approaching it's time to find out exactly how much your sixth graders have learned. Specifically designed for the Common Core ELA standards, this practice test gives students five reading passages,...
Curated OER
Performance-Based Assessment Practice Test (Grade 5 ELA/Literacy)
Check in on the development of your fifth graders' reading and writing skills with this Common Core-designed assessment. Given a series of six reading passages ranging from narrative stories to informational texts, young...
EngageNY
Grade 10 ELA Module 1: Unit 1, Lesson 7
Can three works of literature work together to establish and develop a common central idea? Put your thoughts into writing with a final assessment focused on a unit-long analysis of Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepard to His...
Curated OER
End-of-Year Practice Test (Grade 5 ELA/Literacy)
The end of the year has arrived, which means it's time to find out exactly what your fifth graders have learned over the past few months. With the help of this Common Core-designed assessment that includes two narrative passages and...
Curated OER
Performance-Based Assessment Practice Test (Grade 6 ELA/Literacy)
Keep an eye on the growth of your sixth graders' reading and writing skills with the help of this practice Common Core assessment. Working their way through the six included fiction and nonfiction reading passages, learners answer a...
Penguin Books
Teacher's Guide: Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
A teacher's guide for Kindred provides instructors with a wealth of materials to enrich either a full-class reading or independent study of Octavia E. Butler's popular science fiction novel. The activities are designed to...
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 9: Climax
Conduct a close reading of chapter 9 of The Cay. Read the chapter again and ask pupils to respond to a list of included text-dependent questions. Finish the class with the provided writing assignment, which asks learners to use textual...
Polk Bros Foundation
Analyze History
Determining the central idea of a historical event or theme involves identifying key points of information, such as the people and place involved in the history, challenges faced, and choices made. Your young historians can use this...
Curated OER
Express Yourself Lesson Seed 3
If you're looking to set your class up for writing effective arguments, try out this idea. While originally created with freedom as a guiding idea, the activity could easily be adapted for other themes. As a class, create a chart of...
Fluence Learning
Writing About Literature: Nature in the Writings of John Muir and Emily Dickinson
As an assessment of their skill in crafting a compare and contrast essay, class members read and compare the portrayals of nature in excerpts from naturalist John Muir's My First Summer in the Sierra and from poet Emily Dickinson's...
Georgia Department of Education
Exploring Poetry and Poets
Combine the study of poetry and non-fiction texts with this complete and ready-to-use six-week unit. After reading numerous poems from local writers and compiling a personal anthology, high schoolers find and read a memoir or biography...
Curated OER
The Hat
Honing reading and communication skills through the theme of farm animals is the focus of this lesson. Students read a book about Scandinavian farm animals and complete prediction journal activities. They complete a worksheet about the...
EngageNY
Making a Claim: Emma Burke’s Point of View of the Immediate Aftermath of the Earthquake
Sharpen those pencils; it's time to write! Scholars begin writing the first body paragraph of their literary analysis essays. Additionally, pupils use graphic organizers to analyze a character's point of view from Laurence Yep's...
EngageNY
Making a Claim: Moon Shadow’s Point of View of the Immediate Aftermath
Body paragraphs are the building blocks of every essay. Pupils view and discuss a model essay using a rubric to evaluate one of its supporting paragraphs. Next, scholars use what they've learned to continue drafting their own literary...
Prestwick House
Analyzing Multiple Interpretations of Literature
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...