Encourage teenagers to get involved in ending violence among young people. A Common Core-aligned resource and curriculum guide, designed to be used with a reading of A Time to Break Silence: The Essential Works...

Marc Chagall's painting Romeo and Juliet and Baz Lurhmann's film of the same scene in Romeo + Juliet allow class members to analyze how artists consider the same subject in different media.

After rereading the full text of Walter Mosley's essay "True Crime," groups complete an evidence collection tool worksheet, and then class members independently draft a multi-paragraph, evidence-based response that identifies how Mosley...

Translate the Common Core math standards into a series of achievable "I can" statements with this collection of classroom displays. Offering posters for each standard, this resource is a great way to support your seventh graders as...

Work out your core, Common Core State Standards, through the first workshop in a series of 15 designed for educators. Inquiry-based activities designed for all content areas and grade levels explore the shifts to new standards,...

After reading on the topic of their paper, high schoolers work in pairs to assess how to write powerful, precise thesis statements. The introduction contains three statements: a universal statement, a bridge statement, and a thesis...

What a scam! Middle and high schoolers pose as journalists exposing consumer fraud. In this lesson, they write an article for a magazine using data collected during previous investigations (prior lessons) to defend their findings that a...

The emotional and spiritual oppression of slavery in the African-American experience is the focus of this instructional activity. Middle schoolers analyze various texts by Frederick Douglass and Maya Angelou related to freedom...

Bring environmental issues into your classroom! Practice writing and peer editing research reports on global warming and the greenhouse effect. Middle schoolers can work on their research skills, their writing skills, and how to...

Help young researchers find credible sources online. Modeling with a Google search for information about Shakespeare’s Macbeth, use a computer projector or Smart Board to show class members how weak the top three search results are....

For younger grammar learners, or as part of an ELD lesson for older kids, a word scramble activity provides a fun way to practice food-related vocabulary and spelling. Learners unscramble letters to form 11 food-related words. The...

Pupils confront age-related stereotypes, explore how stereotyping impacts their lives, and discuss how they can make changes to reduce over-generalizations, unfair assumptions, and critical judgments about people groups. They use a...

Explore how the informality of electronic correspondence has affected communications in the workplace. Writers develop pages for a basic writing guide that contains rules and examples to help correct common writing errors. A great way to...

Provide your class with an opportunity to investigate an important historical document. Without identifying the document, distribute copies of the original Bill of Rights, as transcribed by John Beckley, Clerk of the House of...

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...

A three-minute exercise warms-up scholars' writing abilities in order to follow a writing process that ends in an essay. The essay's topic is a barrier and the values used to break it. Four steps include choosing a topic,...

Use this economic activity to focus on writing summaries of informational text. First, middle schoolers define common economic terms used to describe news about the economy. They closely read news about the federal budget deficit and...

The New York Times article “Lessons in Internet Plagiarism,” launches a look at how the Internet has increased the prevalence of plagiarism. The richly detailed lesson includes warm-up and wrap-up activities, discussion questions,...

Do your writers have a hard time properly citing their sources in MLA style? Use this SMART board activity to practice these skills in a fun, interactive way. After debating a topic in class (the lesson uses "random drug testing in...

To allude, or not to allude, that is the question: whether ‘tis better to make a reference and engage your audience or risk confusing them or sounding dated. After reading an article about, and loaded with allusions, class members take a...

Wrap up your unit on The Cay with an engaging argumentative writing assignment. Writers must decide if they believe The Cay should be banned. The resource includes links to several articles, which have been addressed and examined in...

After discussing Haley's techniques in his conclusion of The Autobiography of Malcolm X, class time is devoted to drafting, sharing, and getting feedback on writers' college essays.

Chapter 3 of The Autobiography of Malcolm X discusses how central ideas are developed in a narrative. Readers use the provided annotated bookmark to record evidence of ideas such as racial identity, integration/separation, and systemic...

Readers of The Autobiography of Malcolm X examine how Haley's word choice and point of view in chapter 5 reveal Malcolm X's attitude toward his behavior as he travels from Lansing to Harlem.